title: The Genus Carissa: An Ethnopharmacological, Phytochemical and Pharmacological Review.
abstract: Carissa L. is a genus of the family Apocynaceae, with about 36 species as evergreen shrubs or small trees native to tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia and Oceania. Most of Carissa plants have been employed and utilized in traditional medicine for various ailments, such as headache, chest complains, rheumatism, oedema, gonorrhoea, syphilis, rabies. So far, only nine Carissa species have been phytochemically studied, which led to the identification of 123 compounds including terpenes, flavonoids, lignans, sterols, simple phenolic compounds, fatty acids and esters, and so on. Pharmacological studies on Carissa species have also indicated various bioactive potentials. This review covers the peer-reviewed articles between 1954 and 2016, retrieved from Pubmed, ScienceDirect, SciFinder, Wikipedia and Baidu, using "Carissa" as search term ("all fields") and with no specific time frame set for search. Fifteen important medicinal or ornamental Carissa species were selected and summarized on their botanical characteristics, geographical distribution, traditional uses, phytochemistry, and pharmacological activities.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Plant Resources in West China, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650201, People's Republic of China.|Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100039, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Joseph Sakah
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Kaunda
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Plant Resources in West China, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650201, People's Republic of China. zhangyj@mail.kib.ac.cn.|Yunnan Key Laboratory of Natural Medicinal Chemistry, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650201, People's Republic of China. zhangyj@mail.kib.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Ying-Jun
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Zhang
keywords: Apocynaceae; Carissa; Ethnomedicine; Nortrachelogenin; Pharmacology; Phytochemistry; Triterpenes