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REVIEW ARTICLE

From ethnobotany to immunometabolism: Network pharmacology analysis of Nigerian medicinal plants as modulators of immunemetabolic pathways in obesity and type 2 diabetes

Jesutofunmi Samson Adeyemi1*
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1 Department of Physiology, Lagos State College of Medicine (LASUCOM), Ikeja, Lagos , Nigeria
IMO, 026150015 https://doi.org/10.36922/IMO026150015
Received: 10 April 2026 | Revised: 7 September 2026 | Accepted: 15 September 2026 | Published online: 23 October 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Nigeria bears a disproportionate burden of metabolic disease, with diabetes affecting an estimated 6.8-7.5% of adults and obesity prevalence among women reaching 15.7%, yet the immunometabolic mechanisms of Nigerian plant-derived phytochemicals remain poorly characterized despite a rich ethnobotanical tradition of using indigenous plants to manage these conditions. This narrative review synthesizes evidence on how key phytochemicals from Nigerian medicinal plants regulate macrophage polarization, inflammatory cytokine signaling, insulin sensitivity, and metabolic reprogramming in obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D), drawing on a structured search of PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and African Journals Online (2000-2026), with nuclear factor (NF)-kB, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ), adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK), mechanistic target of rapamycin, hypoxia-inducible factor 1-α (HIF-1α), and macrophage M1/M2 polarization as mechanistic anchors. Multiple phytochemicals abundant in Nigerian plants—including rutin, quercetin, luteolin, chlorogenic acid, vitexin, kolaviron, nimbolide, and 6-gingerol—converge on suppression of NF-kB-driven M1 polarization, AMPK-mediated anti-inflammatory signaling, PPARγ agonism, and attenuation of HIF-1α-driven glycolytic reprogramming, shifting macrophages toward an anti-inflammatory, insulin-sensitizing M2 phenotype. A literature-curated network (five targets, eight phytochemicals; NetworkX centrality analysis) identifies NF-kB as the highest-centrality node and quercetin as the phytochemical with broadest target engagement (coverage score 1.0), offering a reproducible prioritization framework rather than a de novo interaction dataset. Because this evidence derives predominantly from non-Nigerian plant material, in vitro/in vivo/in silico systems, and non-African populations, findings should be regarded as hypothesis-generating rather than translationally validated. Nigerian medicinal plants nonetheless represent an underexplored reservoir of immunometabolic modulators relevant to obesity-linked T2D; integrating ethnobotany with network pharmacology offers a framework for prioritizing candidates for experimental validation before any translational claims are made.

Keywords
Immunometabolism
Nigerian medicinal plants
Macrophage polarization
Obesity
Type 2 diabetes
Nuclear factor-kB
Ethnobotany
Network pharmacology
Funding
This work received no external funding.
Conflict of interest
The author declares no competing interests.
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