Ethnomedicinal and therapeutic values of Flacourtia jangomas

Among the plants often used in traditional medicine, Flacourtia jangomas (Lour.) Raeusch., distributed throughout tropical regions of East Africa and Asia is well-known for its ethnomedicinal and therapeutic uses. Several studies showed that F.jangomas has diverse array of chemical compounds. The aim of the review is to present an updated and comprehensive overview of ethnomedicinal significance, phytochemical and pharmacological aspects of F. jangomas to highlight its ethnopharmacological use and to explore its therapeutic potentials thereby providing a basis for future research. Relevant information and literature on F. jangomas from electronic databases such as Academic Journals, Google, Google Scholar, PubMed, Web of Science, and Science Direct were consulted and analyzed. Available literatures evidently demonstrate that F. jangomas possess a wide spectrum of pharmacological activities that could be observed by the presence of varied range of chemical constituents. Phytochemical and pharmacological investigations showed that extracts of different parts and major active components of F. jangomas had antimicrobial, antidiabetic, antidiarrheal and antioxidant activities. This emphasizes the need for further investigation to explore more bioactive chemical constituents and new bioefficacies of the plant and to establish a credible relationship between molecular structure and activity of compounds.