Malaria is a parasitic disease endemic to tropical and subtropical regions responsible for hundreds of millions of clinical cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths yearly. Its agent, the Plasmodium sp., has a highly variable antigenicity, which accounts for the emergence and spread of resistance to all available treatments. In light of this rising problem, scientists have turned to naturally occurring compounds obtained from plants recurrently used in traditional medicine in endemic areas. Ethnopharmacological approaches seem to be helpful in selecting the most interesting plants for the search of new antiplasmodial and antimalarial molecules. However, this search for new antimalarials is complex and time-consuming and ultimately leads to a great number of interesting compounds with a lack of discussion of their characteristics. This review aims to examine the most promising antiplasmodial phenolic compounds (phenolic acids, flavonoids, xanthones, coumarins, lignans, among others) and derivatives isolated over the course of the last 28 y (1990 - 2018) and discuss their structure-activity relationships, mechanisms of action, toxicity, new perspectives they could add to the fight against malaria, and finally, the difficulties of transforming these potential compounds into new antimalarials.

中文翻译：

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天然酚类化合物和衍生物作为潜在的抗疟药

疟疾是热带和亚热带地区的一种寄生虫病，每年造成数亿临床病例和数十万人死亡。它的病原体疟原虫具有高度可变的抗原性，这说明了对所有可用治疗的耐药性的出现和传播。鉴于这一日益严重的问题，科学家们已转向从植物中提取的天然化合物，这些植物经常用于流行地区的传统医学。民族药理学方法似乎有助于选择最有趣的植物来寻找新的抗疟原虫和抗疟分子。然而，寻找新的抗疟药既复杂又耗时，最终会产生大量有趣的化合物，而缺乏对其特性的讨论。