William L. Brown Center, Missouri Botanical Garden, P.O. Box 299, MO 63166-0299, USA; Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Calle Ovidio Suarez (26), Cota Cota, La Paz, Bolivia.
Herbario Nacional de Bolivia, Instituto de Ecología-UMSA, Campus Universitario, Cota Cota Calle 27, La Paz, Bolivia.
J Ethnopharmacol. 2016 Dec 4;193:76-95. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2016.07.074. Epub 2016 Jul 29.
Given the importance of local markets as a source of medicinal plants for both healers and the population, literature on market flows and the value of the plant material traded is rather scarce. This stands in contrast to wealth of available information for other components of Bolivian ethnobotany. The present study attempts to remedy this situation by providing a detailed inventory of medicinal plant markets in the La Paz-El Alto metropolitan area, hypothesizing that both species composition, and medicinal applications, have changed considerably over time.
From October 2013-October 2015 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 plant vendors between October 2013 and October 2015 in the Mercado Rodriguez, Mercado Calle Santa Cruz, Mercado Cohoni, Mercado Cota Cota, and Mercado Seguencoma and Mercado El Alto in order to elucidate more details on plant usage and provenance. The results of the present study were then compared to previous inventories of medicinal plants in La Paz and El Alto studies to elucidate changes over time and impact of interview techniques.
In this study we encountered 163 plant species belonging to 127 genera and 58 families. In addition, 17 species could not be identified. This species richness is considerably higher than that reported in previous studies (2005, 129 species of 55 families; 2015, 94 identified species). While the overall distribution of illness categories is in line with older reports the number of species used per application, as well as the applications per species, were much higher in the present study. Overall, informant consensus was relatively low, which might be explained by the large number of new species that have entered the local pharmacopoeia in the last decade, although some species might simply have been missed by previous studies. In course of the present study it became apparent that even well known species might often be replaced by other apparently similar but botanically unrelated species due to environmental and market forces CONCLUSIONS: The present study indicated that, while the floristic composition of markets in the La Paz metropolitan area remained relatively constant over the last decade, with this inventory adding about 20% of species to previous studies, the number of indications for which certain species were used increased tremendously, and that profound differences exist even between markets in close proximity. The dramatic increase in previously not used species used per indication might pose serious risks for consumers. We found serious problems due to species replacements. Even plants that have a well established vernacular name, and are easily recognizable botanically, can be replaced by other species that can pose a serious health risk. Vendor education and stringent identification of the material sold in public markets are clearly needed.
鉴于当地市场作为治疗师和民众药用植物来源的重要性，有关市场流动和交易植物材料价值的文献相当匮乏。这与玻利维亚民族植物学其他方面丰富的可用信息形成鲜明对比。本研究试图通过详细列出拉巴斯-埃尔阿尔托大都市区的药用植物市场清单来弥补这一不足，假设物种组成和药用应用都随着时间的推移发生了相当大的变化。
从 2013 年 10 月至 2015 年 10 月，在罗德里格斯市场、圣克鲁斯街市场、科霍尼市场、科塔科塔市场、塞古恩科马市场和埃尔阿尔托市场，对 39 名植物销售商进行了半结构化访谈，以详细了解植物的使用和来源。本研究的结果随后与拉巴斯和埃尔阿尔托之前的药用植物清单进行了比较，以阐明随时间的变化和访谈技术的影响。
在这项研究中，我们遇到了 163 种植物，属于 127 属和 58 科。此外，有 17 种无法识别。这一物种丰富度明显高于之前的研究（2005 年，55 科 129 种；2015 年，94 种已鉴定的物种）。虽然总体疾病类别分布与较旧的报告一致，但每种应用的物种使用数量以及每种物种的应用数量在本研究中要高得多。总体而言，信息共识相对较低，这可能是由于在过去十年中，当地药典中出现了大量新物种，尽管一些物种可能只是被之前的研究遗漏了。在本研究过程中，很明显，即使是众所周知的物种，由于环境和市场力量，也经常被其他看似相似但植物学上不相关的物种所取代。
本研究表明，尽管拉巴斯大都市区市场的植物区系组成在过去十年中相对保持稳定，本清单为之前的研究增加了约 20%的物种，但某些物种的使用指示数量却大大增加，即使在毗邻的市场之间也存在明显差异。每种适应症使用的以前未使用的物种数量的急剧增加可能会对消费者造成严重风险。我们发现由于物种替代而存在严重问题。即使是那些有公认的俗名且在植物学上很容易识别的植物，也可能被其他可能对健康造成严重威胁的物种所取代。显然需要对供应商进行教育，并严格识别公共市场销售的材料。
