Research on the use of medicinal plants: a systematic review on methodology

Abstract

BACKGROUND: A large number of people in the world rely on medicinal plants (MP). Among 1500 species, 208 are frequently used in Sri Lanka. The knowledge of the people about many MPs is very poor. One can argue forever what precise percentage of the world’s population use MPs. To address this question, scientific research on MP usage have been conducted. OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of research methodology of MP consumption and usage. METHODS: The English articles available on Pubmed database were reviewed. The search term was “treat**Title+) OR consum**Title+) OR use**Title+) OR utili**Title+)) AND medicinal plants *MeSH Terms]. The inclusion criteria were consumption, study, survey of MP published between 2009 and 2013. Exclusion criteria were review, chemical, clinical, pharmacological, animal studies and MP for specific illness. RESULTS: Of the 225 articles, sixteen were selected for full review. The results were summarized under following headings: settings, study design, aim/objective of study, study population, sample, data collection, and statistics used. Europe and Africa were contributing to 75% of the articles. The study population comprised key informants and lay people. None of the studies indicated the sample size calculation formula. Mean sample size of articles was 99.36 (SD=78). The sampling method was purposive (09), random (03), and snowballing (02). The data collection was done by interview using questionnaires. Descriptive (09) and advanced (07) statistics have been used. CONCLUSIONS: All articles were surveys. Number of publications was three articles per year. Most of them were conducted in developing countries and analysed using descriptive statistics.