Chemical Constituents and Biological Activities of Plants from the Genus Schinus

Abstract

The Schinus genus belongs to the Anacardiaceae family and comprises 29 species native from South America, distributed in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay. Some Schinus species have been introduced in other warm and tropical regions of the World and are cultivated as ornamental trees. A number of plants in this genus are used in the folk medicine for several pathologies. Over the last decades an increasing number of papers have been published reporting the isolation and identification of bioactive secondary metabolites and the pharmacological activities of extracts, essential oils and isolated ompounds obtained from this genus. This communication offers a general view of the structural characteristics and biological activities of the secondary metabolites isolated from plants of the Schinus genus, as well as their ethnomedical uses and toxicological considerations.