Vitex rotundifolia L. f. and Vitex trifolia L.: A review on their traditional medicine, phytochemistry, pharmacology

Vitex rotundifolia L. f. and Vitex trifolia L. belong to the genus Vitex, and Vitex rotundifolia L. f. evolved from Vitex trifolia L. Both are essential ethnic medicinal plants with a long history, commonly used to treat headaches, fever, diarrhea, hair loss, wound recovery, and other diseases. The research status of Vitex trifolia L. and its relative species Vitex rotundifolia L. f. were reviewed from the aspects of traditional medicinal use, phytochemistry, and pharmacological activities, to provide a reference for the further development and utilization of Vitex rotundifolia L. f. and Vitex trifolia L. In this paper, a comprehensive search of published literature was conducted through various books and online databases to obtain relevant information on Vitex rotundifolia L. f. and Vitex trifolia L. The search terms “(Vitex rotundifolia) OR (Vitex trifolia) OR (Fructus viticis)” were entered in PubMed, Web of Science, China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, Baidu Scholar, respectively. In addition to setting the year threshold of “2018–2022” on Baidu Scholar, other databases searched all fields and found 889, 283, 1263, 1023, and 147 articles, respectively. Among them, review, repetition, overlapping data, and other reasons were excluded, and finally, a total of 164 articles were included in the review study. A total of 369 compounds have been identified, including 159 terpenoids, 51 flavonoids, 83 phenylpropanoids, and 76 other compounds. Pharmacological studies have shown that Vitex rotundifolia L. f. and Vitex trifolia L. have a variety of pharmacological activities, such as anti-tumor, analgesic, antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antibacterial, and estrogen-like activity. Modern clinical use for treating cold headaches, diarrhea dysentery, irregular menstruation, and other diseases. As traditional medicinal plants, Vitex rotundifolia L. f. and Vitex trifolia L. have wealthy chemical constituents and extensive pharmacological activities and are widely used in clinical practice from traditional to modern times. However, the research on the pharmacological activities of Vitex rotundifolia L. f. and Vitex trifolia L. is not in-depth, and the potential active components still need to be explored.