Herbal medicine and nervous system diseases in the Rif of Morocco

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge and use of medicinal plants in the treatment of neurological diseases in the Rif region of northern Morocco.
Methods: An ethnobotanical survey was carried out in the Rif (northern Morocco) from 2016 to 2018. In order to gather information about indigenous medicinal plants and local ethnomedical knowledge, 625 local traditional herbalists and users of these plants were interviewed. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and group discussions, analyzed, and compared by quantitative ethnobotanical indices such as family
importance value, relative frequency of citation, plant part value (PPV), fidelity level, and informant consensus factor (ICF) .
Results: Data were collected from 31 medicinal plant species belonging to 14 botanical families. Asteraceae and Lamiaceae were the most commonly reported medicinal plants, with 5 species each. Concerning the diseases treated, epilepsy problems have the highest ICF (0.99). The survey revealed that leaves were the most used part of the plants (PPV= 34.7%), and the most commonly used preparation was an infusion (41.6%).
Conclusion: There exists indigenous ethnomedical knowledge of medicinal plants in the Moroccan Rif to treat neurologic diseases. Based on our findings, we recommend that phytochemical and pharmacologic research be considered to discover potential treatments from these documented plants.