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Medicinal Plants Of Trinidad And Tobago: Selection Of Antidiabetic Remedies, Angelle L. Bullard-Roberts

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a group of non-infectious diseases that cause hyperglycemia. DM symptoms were first clinically described by ancient Greek physicians whose prescriptions included plant-based remedies. Today, DM affects >400 million people globally and prevalence rates are rapidly increasing in developing countries where basic healthcare relies on local knowledge of botanical remedies. Many developing countries are home to diverse peoples and plants—providing fodder for varied plant-selection strategies and unique botanical pharmacopoeias.

I addressed the plant-selection strategies used in a multi-ethnic, developing country, Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), to ascertain their role in shaping the local antidiabetic pharmacopoeia and to assess …