Plantas medicinais globais: uma revisão sistemática dos padrões taxonômicos em mercados locais

Abstract

A new proposal in Ethnobotany is to investigate the existence of regional patterns in the use of plants by human populations around the world. To this end, tools for systematic review and meta-analysis have been appropriated by ethnobotanical studies. In ethnobotany, there are many studies that show the tendency that some popular uses are proportionally more present in some taxonomic groups in particular, mainly in the use of medicinal plants, however the way of investigating this pattern by individual locations generates some discrepancies between sets of taxonomic groups highlighted in each study. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether there are taxonomic patterns in medicinal plants sold in local markets and it was developed in two parts: (1) to evaluate the sample quality and to identify the factors that interfere in the sample quality of the ethnobotanical studies carried out in local markets and (2) to identify over- and under-represented plant families in local markets from a systematic review of global reach. Search strategies were used according to the PRISMA protocol, including results from Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science search engines. Articles classified as having a high risk of bias were excluded from the analysis. The Imprecise Dirichlet Model (IDM) was used to identify over-represented and under-represented families. The main reason for the sampling problem was the lack of information about the sample and the universe. Among the factors that were related to the presence of sample problems, are the absence of hypotheses and ethnobotanical indexes. Of the families, 36 families were considered overrepresented, among which the main ones were Fabaceae, Lamiaceae, Malvaceae, Rutaceae, Solanaceae and Zingiberaceae. 15 families were considered underrepresented, including: Orchidaceae, Bromeliaceae, Cyperaceae, Poaceae and Asteraceae. Studies carried out in order to relate the taxonomic influence with the local attribution of therapeutic vocation of plants by practitioners of phytotherapy can bring important clues to the bioprospecting of bioactive chemical compounds. Our study corroborated with the recurrence of a set of families already identified as promising for bioprospecting, however it also presented some families that had not yet been highlighted.