Traditional medicinal use of Juniperus communis in the Pirot District (Serbia)

The research provides evidence on traditional knowledge about the medicinal purposes of juniper – Juniperus communis in the Pirot District (southeastern Serbia). A total of 631 informants were surveyed on the knowledge and medicinal use of plants in the four municipalities of the Pirot District: Pirot, Babušnica, Bela Palanka, and Dimitrovgrad. Seven respondents provided a total of eight reports on the ethnobotanical use of juniper berries. Based on surveys among the rural population in Pirot District, the berries of J. communis were usually used internally, for the treatment of allergies (2 reports), against high blood pressure (1 report), for digestion (1 report), against thyroid diseases (1 report), for improvement of immunity (1 report), against kidney and bladder diseases (1 report), and for urination (1 report). The alcoholic extract was the most commonly used preparation, while decoction was less frequently utilized. The uses of J. communis in the treatment of allergy in the form of decoction, as well as for the treatment of high blood pressure, and thyroid diseases in the form of alcoholic extract were not reported in previously conducted ethnobotanical investigations in neighboring areas in Serbia and the Balkan Peninsula, so these uses can be considered the novelties of the present study. The potential scientific implications of the results in this paper are to inform the further clinical or pharmacological studies for drug discovery.