Ethnobotany study of the most used diuretic plants in Province Villa Clara, Cuba

An ethnobotanic study was carried out combining methods and techniques characteristic of the qualitative and quantitative investigation, in 10 municipalities of Villa Clara province, Cuba. It was taken a heterogeneous sample of 250 people constituted for: experts of plants, herbalists and expert doctors in phytotherapy who identified the plants more used with these ends in the studied communities. The data obtained starting from the consent of informants, were analyzed by means of the index of use value (IVU) and the level of significant use (UST) of the Tradicional of the Medicine of the Island (TRAMIL). They registered 20 medicinal species contained in 14 botanical families and they met 8 plants with a bigger use level and a bigger IVU. 60% of the plants reported as diuretic lacked scientific validation, the rest of the identified species has been studied at preclinic level, although in its great majority they don't appear in the Cuban Pharmacopeia of Medicinal Plants neither they are authorized by the agency Cuban reguladora, Center for the State Control of the Quality of the Medications (CECMED). The documentation related with the uses of the medicinal plants in the study areas, reveal that the traditional knowledge continues deeply ingrained to the communities and the popular knowledge stays in the representative figures of the herbalists and the experts of plants. The present work intends to evaluate through the medical ethnobotany, the current state of the traditional knowledge on medicinal plants with diuretic activity attributed in several communities of Villa Clara province, Cuba.