The isolation of bioactive compounds from medicinal plants, based on traditional use or ethnomedical data, is a highly promising potential approach for identifying new and effective antimalarial drug candidates. The purpose of this review was to create a compilation of the phytochemical studies on medicinal plants used to treat malaria in traditional medicine from the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPSC): Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. In addition, this review aimed to show that there are several medicinal plants popularly used in these countries for which few scientific studies are available. The primary approach compared the antimalarial activity of native species used in each country with its extracts, fractions and isolated substances. In this context, data shown here could be a tool to help researchers from these regions establish a scientific and technical network on the subject for the CPSC where malaria is a public health problem.

A caracterização de cepas de P. falciparum coletadas de três pacientes internados no Centro de Provas Clínico-Farmacológicas do Hospital Barros Barreto (Belém, PA), através da eletroforese em acetato de celulose para duas enzimas (GPI e ADA), assim como através de testes de sensibilidade para duas drogas, cloroquina e mefloquina, permitiram observações da variação dos tipos enzimáticos em um dos pacientes e modificação no nível de sensibilidade à cloroquina em outro, tanto em amostras obtidas da infecção original, como em cada uma das recrudescências.

Characterization of Plasmodium falciparum strains obtained from three patients interned in the Clinico-Pharmalogical Testing Centre of the Barros Barreto Hospital, Belém, Pará, Brazil, was carried out using cellulose acetate electrophoresis for the two enzymes glucose phosphate isomerase EC.5.3.1.9 (GPI) and adenosine diaminase EC.3.5.4.4 (ADA) and sensibility tests for the two antimalarial drugs, chloroquin and mefloquine. This characterization showed an enzyme variant in one of the patients, and a modification in the chloroquine sensibility level in another; not only in the strains from the original infections, but also in those from each of the relapses.