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Jalap
Ipomoea purga
También llamadaRaíz de Jalapa (Spanish, Mexico) · Jalapae tuber (pharmacy name) · Officinal jalap
A Mexican morning glory whose tuberous root, named after the Xalapa region of Mexico, is a pre-Hispanic purgative that became one of the most traded medicines of the 18th-century world. Its resin glycosides provoke strong bowel contractions. It is still sold by Mexican herbalists as a laxative, but there are no modern clinical trials, and overdoses cause vomiting and abdominal pain.
Para qué se usa
- EstreñimientoTradicional
A pre-Hispanic Mexican purgative still used as a laxative and found in over-the-counter products sold by herbalists in Mexico; its resin glycosides cause purging, but no clinical trials were found.1,2,3
Seguridad
- Embarazo
- Datos insuficientes
- Lactancia
- Datos insuficientes
- Niños
- Not for home use as a purgative.
Efectos secundarios
- Vomiting and abdominal pain, especially above the traditional dose
En las tradiciones curativas
- Mesoamerican
Raíz de Jalapa
Pre-Hispanic purgative root, one of a complex of Mexican morning-glory roots used to move the bowels; still sold by herbalists in contemporary Mexico.
As reviewed by Pereda-Miranda and colleagues
- Western herbalism
Jalap root
Adopted in Europe from the 16th century as a purgative within humoral medicine, which treated illness by drawing off humours through bleeding, purging and vomiting. By the late 18th century it was a basic supply of European pharmacies and of naval and plantation medicine chests, alongside cinchona and ipecacuanha.
Compuestos activos
- resin glycosides (jalapin type)
- ether-soluble glycoresins that stimulate peristalsis in the small intestine; the purgative principle
- purgic acids A and B
- hexasaccharide glycosidic acids that distinguish authentic jalap from false jalaps
- jalapinoside and purgins
- resin glycosides that reversed multidrug resistance in cancer cells in the laboratory
Historia
Colonists renamed the purgative root 'jalap' after the region of Xalapa where it was abundant. Spain imported about 5 tonnes a year around 1700; by 1802 New Spain exported 134 tonnes, and jalap travelled on Manila galleons to Asia, to Jesuit pharmacies in Goa and Macau, and to the markets of Istanbul and Smyrna. A 1742 inventory of a village barber-surgeon in Lower Saxony already lists it.
Fuentes
- 1.Pereda-Miranda R et al. Profiling of the resin glycoside content of Mexican jalap roots with purgative activity. J Nat Prod 2006 (abstract)
- 2.Pereda-Miranda R, Bah M. Biodynamic constituents in the Mexican morning glories: purgative remedies transcending boundaries. Curr Top Med Chem 2003 (abstract)
- 3.Hernández-Rojas AC et al. The jalap roots: a herbal legacy from the neotropics to the world. J Ethnopharmacol 2025 (abstract)
- 4.Gänger S. World trade in medicinal plants from Spanish America, 1717–1815. Med Hist 2015
- 5.Alonso-Castro AJ et al. Medicinal plants from North and Central America and the Caribbean considered toxic for humans: the other side of the coin. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med 2017
- 6.Ono M. Resin glycosides from Convolvulaceae plants. J Nat Med 2017
- 7.Bautista E et al. Jalapinoside, a macrocyclic bisdesmoside from the resin glycosides of Ipomoea purga, as a modulator of multidrug resistance. J Nat Prod 2015 (abstract)
- 8.GBIF: Ipomoea purga (Wender.) Hayne — IUCN Red List: Not Evaluated
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