Background: Infertility is a concern for couples, families and society. In almost half of the cases, it is due to male infertility, which results in the azoospermia and oligospermia. This infertility, in developing countries like Benin, is often care by the use of medicinal medicinal plants. However, very few data exist on plants with spermatogenic benefits at the current stage. Therefore, this work aimed to enlist knowledge about plants used in the treatment of male infertility in southern Benin.
Methods : An ethnomedicinal investigation has been conducted by questioning traditional healer and market herbalists using the method of semi-structured interview. A descriptive and quantitative statistical method was used to analyze the socio-demographic data of the informants. ANOVA One-way and Independent Samples T-Test were used to assess the degree of endogenous knowledge of the respondents. Ethnopharmacological data has been analyzed by ethnobotanical indices such as informant consensus factor ( ICF ), frequency of citation ( FC ) for each plant species and contribution of each plant to drug recipes ( Cpr ) to establish indicators on the use values attributed to plants listed.
Results: 90 respondents including 34 market herbalists and 54 traditional healers participated in this study. Data collected allowed us, on the basic of 70 recipes provided by the informants, to list 60 plant species belonging to 57 genera and 40 botanical families. Informants had a high degree of consensus (ICF = 0.58) on plants used for treatment of male infertility. The most plants cited were Garcinia kola (10.09%), Cissus populnea (10.09%), Carpolobia lutea (7.40%) among market herbalists and Garcinia kola (10.15%), Cyperus esculentus (06.09%), Citrus aurantifiola (06.09 %) among traditional healers. The recipes composed of 1 to 7 plants prepared mainly in the form of maceration and trituration.
Conclusion : Beninese flora has a variety of plants used in the treatment of male infertility. This study provided for the first time a list of medicinal plants used for the treatment of male infertility in southern Benin. Further pharmacological and toxicological studies may be undertaken for the scientific validation of the therapeutic effect of these medicinal plants.