%0 Journal Article %T Aspectos qu¨ªmicos, biol¨®gicos e etnofarmacol¨®gicos do g¨ºnero Cassia %A Viegas Junior %A Cl¨¢udio %A Rezende %A Amanda de %A Silva %A Dulce Helena Siqueira %A Castro-Gamb£¿a %A Ian %A Bolzani %A Vanderlan da Silva %A Barreiro %A Eliezer J. %A Miranda %A Ana Luisa Palhares de %A Alexandre-Moreira %A Magna Suzana %A Young %A Maria Cl¨¢udia Marx %J Qu¨ªmica Nova %D 2006 %I Sociedade Brasileira de Qu¨ªmica %R 10.1590/S0100-40422006000600025 %X species of cassia are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world, and have been extensively investigated chemically and pharmacologically.they are known to be a rich source of phenolic derivatives, most of them with important biological and pharmacological properties. some asian, african and indian tribes use these species as a laxative, purgative, antimicrobial, antipyretic, antiviral and anti-inflammatory agent. among a number of other classes of secondary metabolites, such as anthracene derivatives, antraquinones, steroids and stilbenoids, biologically active piperidine alkaloids are an especially important bioactive class of compounds that showed to be restricted to a small group of cassia species. in this paper we present an overview of the chemical, biological and ethnopharmacological data on cassia piblished in the literature. %K cassia %K fabaceae %K leguminosae. %U http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0100-40422006000600025&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en