Читать книгу Poisonous Plants and Phytochemicals in Drug Discovery - Группа авторов - Страница 15

Numerous poisonous plants exist in our environment and have been the subject of great speculation, study, and concern. Poisonous plants have been used as food, medicines, agents for crime, means of dispensing justice, capital punishment, suicide, bioterrorism, fishing poisons, and for recreational and spiritual purposes as hallucinogens or psychoactive agents. Such plants can cause a wide range of adverse effects when ingested by animals or people, depending on the organ system affected [1, 2].

Plant toxicity is due to a wide diversity of chemical toxins [1–3]. Certain plant species have multiple toxins with the ability to affect different systems [2]. Other less studied forms of toxicity of plant compounds, such as those that manifest as subacute and chronic types in the form of carcinogens, teratogens, endocrine disruptors, and genotoxic compounds, are difficult to attribute to specific plants or their compounds [4]. The toxicity of different plant species is dependent on the susceptibility of the organism in question, the growth stage or part of the plant ingested, the amount consumed, and the species [2]. In the same vein, the observed effects of ingestion of toxic plants range from mild forms to those that result in death after ingestion of even very small quantities. Additionally, there are only a few plant toxins with antidotes, with most other poisoning cases managed symptomatically [1]. The good news is that antidotes are rarely necessary when managing poisonings by plant toxins in patients [5].

This chapter looks at some notable examples of widely studied toxic plants but is by no means exhaustive. Even among the widely studied examples, there is incomplete toxicity information [6–8]. The chapter introduces the reader to numerous general aspects of toxic plants. Toxic plants are of great economic importance in the livestock industry but also pose a threat to the health of humans and domestic animals, which are often exposed to the same toxic plants because of a shared environment. Various toxic compounds from plants such as those used in arrow and dart poisons could prove valuable for drug discovery and research [9].