Kebede Feyisa, Wondu Feyisa, Ture Girma, Teyiba Kemal
Background: Ethiopia is recognized as one of the richest biodiversity in Africa. This paper presents a review of relevant medicinal plants used for treatment of some urological and urogenital diseases in Ethiopia. Methods: This study is based on a review of the literature published in scientific journals, books, theses, proceedings, and reports. SPSS Version 20 and an Excel spreadsheet were used to summarize relevant ethno-botanical/medicinal information using descriptive statistics, frequency, percentage tables, and graphs. Results: A total of 146 medicinal plants, distributed in 127 genera and 64 families, are reported in the reviewed literature. The highest family in terms of species number was Cucurbitaceae (7.51%), Asteriaceae (7.51%), Euphorbaceae (6.20%) and Apiaceae (4.80%). A higher diversity of medicinal plants was reported from Southern nations and nationalities (44.5%), Oromia (41.1%), and Amhara (27.4%) regional states. Analysis of ethno-medicinal recipes indicated that mainly herbs (46.8%), followed by shrubs (32.6%) were growth form, while root (36.2%) and leaves (35.3%) were the most used parts. Decoction (26.1%), concoction (16.5%), and pounding (11.9%) were found to be the most frequently employed herbal remedy preparation methods and were administered orally. Conclusion: The review showed that many claimed medicinal plants were used for the treatment of urological and urogenital disorders across the regions of Ethiopian. Most of the medicinal plants are not scientifically experimented and yet are at a higher risk to loss mainly by different activities. Therefore, phytochemical studies are recommended mainly on frequently utilized medicinal plants, which can serve as a basis for future investigation in order to produce natural drugs.
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