Zootechnical, Pharmacological Uses and Chemical Composition of Napoleonaea vogelii Hook & Planch (Lecythidaceae) in West Africa—A Review

Napoleonaea vogelii, Lecythidaceae family is a tropical evergreen shrub widely distributed in the coastal regions of West African countries including Benin. It is a medicinal plant whose leaves and bark are of great utility in traditional medicine. Despite its importance, it is little used in ethnoveterinary medicine and its pharmacological basis in this field and especially in the treatment of parasitic diseases caused by Haemonchus contortus is very little documented. This review aims to synthesise existing data on the chemical composition, pharmacological and zootechnical usefulness of N. vogelii and to identify the gaps of these works in order to propose research perspectives. Google Scholar database was used to gather the majority of useful information available on N. vogelii. The results showed that of the 23 publications included in the present study, 60.87% dealt distinctly with the pharmacological properties of N. vogelii. These properties include anthelmintic, antidiabetic, wound healing, antimicrobial, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant properties and N. vogelii contains many secondary metabolites including alkaloids, tannins, flavonoids, saponins, glycosides which give it its pharmacological properties. The Correspondence Factor Analysis performed for the variables extracts and chemical compounds showed that the presence of a given chemical compound is not dependent on the type of extract. This work has gathered information on N. vogelii and found that the species has powerful therapeutic potentials but very little use in traditional veterinary medicine. More research is needed on this plant to make available ethnoveterinary pharmacological data to enable proper use in the treatment of animal diseases in general and gastrointestinal parasitosis of small ruminants in particular.