Phytomedicines of Sickle Cell Crisis in Mezam Division, Cameroon: Preventive and Curative Cares

Background: The aim of this study was to survey the Mezam Division of Cameroon, with a view to documenting how the population of that area treat sickle cells disease using medicinal plants, and to determine the need for further information on sickle cell disease or sickle cell anaemia in that division.
Method: Two questionnaires (one to patients and the other to traditional healers) were designed to gather information on every day life of patients and their parents, and medicinal plants were collected during the field trips.
Results: Seventeen plants species belonging to 16 genera and 13 families were collected. They formed 12 recipes used to treat sickle cell by 5 traditional healers. With the help of these phytotherapists, we meet 92 former and new patients aged from 1 to 35 years old. The current symptoms of the disease were anaemia, hand and foot syndrome, splenomegaly and rheumatic pains. A rate of 52.2% of patients felt better after the treatment; 19.5% of patients with ongoing treatment, felt persistent symptoms; and 28.3% abandoned the treatment.
Conclusion: Two haemoglobin diseases rage in Mezam Division and present some standard clinic demonstrations of anaemia hemolytic: HbS/S and HbS/C. The therapeutic preparations with Zanthoxylum zanthoxyloides exert an influence over haematopoietic organs like the spleen, by a dedifferentiation of its cells, and the production of Hb(α2, Ò¯2) which is the foetal haemoglobin. Thus the patient haemoglobins are S/S and F. This was observed in a patient aged 26 years old in 1999. Since that year, she is still symptom-free up to 2011. The main limitation of this research, however, may be used as a direction for future research, which is, assessing the results from the field at the chemical level in laboratories.