Data on medicinal plants used in Central America to manage diabetes and its sequelae (skin conditions, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, urinary problems and vision loss)

The data described in this article is related to the review article “Medicinal plants used in the traditional management of diabetes and its sequelae in Central America: a review” (Giovannini et al., 2016) [1]. We searched publications on the useful plants of Central America in databases and journals by using selected relevant keywords. We then extracted reported uses of medicinal plants within the disease categories: diabetes mellitus, kidney disease, urinary problems, skin diseases and infections, cardiovascular disease, sexual dysfunction, vision loss, and nerve damage. The following countries were included in our definition of Central America: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Data were compiled in a bespoke Access database. Plant names from the published sources were validated against The Plant List (TPL, (The Plant List, 2013) [2]) and accepted names and synonyms were extracted. In total, the database includes 607 plant names obtained from the published sources which correspond to 537 plant taxa, 9271 synonyms and 1055 use reports.

Publication with primary data searched using both English and Spanish Keywords in databases. Keywords: name of the country and "ethnobotany", "medicinal plants", "ethnopharmacology", "ethnomedicine", and "herbal medicine". Data source location Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK Data accessibility Data is within this article

Value of the data
Data scattered across literature compiled in one database. Future research and analysis on the medicinal plants used to manage diabetes and its sequelae at country and regional level will be facilitated by the data included here.
Plant names validated against The Plant List, taxonomic status checked, and current accepted name provided.
Complete list of synonyms for compiled medicinal plants to facilitate research.

Data
The data includes 1055 use reports of 537 plant taxa used to manage diabetes and its sequelae in Central America (Supplementary material 1: table MedicinalPlants_ReferencesUseReports). These use reports were extracted from 32 sources publishing primary data on the useful plants of Central America (Supplementary material 1: table References). The data also include the plant names as originally entered in the database, the name of these were matched to The Plant List (TPL), and the accepted name according to TPL (Supplementary material 1: table Medicinal Plants_matched_TPL); and a full list of synonyms (9271 records) for each accepted name (Supplementary material 1: table  MedicinalPlants_Synonyms). TPL identifiers, taxonomic status, data source, International Plant Name Index (IPNI) identifiers and confidence levels (see [2]) are also provided in the tables. The data also include tables of analysis of numbers of use reports by family, genus and full accepted name (Supplementary material 1).
The data are analysed in a related article [1].

Experimental design, materials and methods
We searched publications with data on the useful plants of Central America in databases (SCOPUS, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and PubMed) and on relevant journals by using selected relevant keywords (name of the country and "ethnobotany", "medicinal plants", "ethnopharmacology", "ethnomedicine", and "herbal medicine"). We conducted the search using both English and Spanish Keywords. Then, we extracted reported uses of medicinal plants and entered the data in a bespoke Access database within the disease categories diabetes mellitus, kidney disease, urinary problems, skin diseases and infections, cardiovascular disease, sexual dysfunctions, visual loss, and nerve damage. We included in our definition of Central America the following countries: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Compiled data were entered in a bespoke Access database (Supplementary material 1). Table 1 shows the structure of the database and Fig. 1 shows the relationships among the tables within the database. Only primary data was extracted from literature and included in the database. Plant names from the published sources were validated against The Plant List (TPL, [2]) at point of entry and, after data entry, by evaluating automatically the entire dataset against TPL. Where synonyms were found in the primary sources these were matched to the accepted name according to TPL, to avoid miscounting the number of plant taxa found, as some plants were found under more than one name. Complete lists of synonyms for each accepted plant name were extracted from TPL.