Sananga

Peoples and plant named in the literature

An integrative review published in 2023 describes Tabernaemontana sananho Ruiz and Pavón, a small shrub-like tree of the Apocynaceae family, as a plant used as medicine by peoples across Latin America, and notes that in Brazil it is popularly called sananga or colírio da floresta (forest eye drops). Citing secondary ethnobotanical sources, the review attributes use of the plant as food or medicine to the Huni Kuĩ of Brazil, the Aguaruna and Lamas Quechua of Peru, several peoples of Ecuador and the Coreguaje of Colombia. Uses vary by people and plant part, and they are not all ocular.

The same review places the Huni Kuĩ, who speak a Pano-family language, on Indigenous lands in Acre, Brazil, and along the Purus and Curanja rivers in Peru. Citing an anthropological chapter by Oliveira, it reports that sananga belongs to Huni Kuĩ ethnobotanical practice and that in Acre villages one of its applications is ocular. No source opened for this page dates the beginning of eye use or documents an unbroken history from earlier periods.

Earlier botanical and ethnobotanical records

Van Beek and colleagues published a 1984 review of the genus Tabernaemontana covering taxonomy, alkaloid chemistry, ethnobotany and pharmacology. According to the 2023 review, that work records a mixture of T. sananho used in Brazil against rheumatic pain and in Colombia for eye wounds. The species was first described botanically by Ruiz and Pavón in 1798, and the genus has a confused taxonomic history with several synonyms. Only the abstract of the 1984 review was accessible, so species-level details could not be checked directly.

Spread to urban and non-Indigenous settings

Anthropological work cited in the 2023 review reports that Pano peoples of Acre, mainly the Yawanawá, Huni Kuin, Shawanawa and Katukina, have recently presented their culture in cities through rituals using forest medicines, held in holistic spaces and practitioners' homes. A separate anthropological article on Huni Kuĩ forest medicines places sananga alongside ayahuasca, rapé and kambô in this movement from Indigenous territories to Brazilian and international urban centers.

In an online survey of 386 people who had used kambô, a frog secretion used in Amazonian practices, 61.66 percent reported lifetime use of sananga eye drops. The authors describe sananga and rapé as ritual plants often associated with ayahuasca but little known to Western populations outside that context. The sample was self-selected and is not representative of sananga users generally.

Names for the preparation and the plant

Sananga is the term most used in Brazil and in wider circulation, and the Portuguese phrase colírio da floresta means forest eye drops. The 2023 review, citing Oliveira, gives shane tsamaite as the Hãtxa Kuĩ name for the preparation among the Huni Kuĩ. Other names it catalogs include kunakip (Aguaruna), sikta, abiu bravo and caimo de montaña, and airo toañü, which the Coreguaje use for the plant as a food. The review does not always separate names for the plant from names for the preparation.

Botanical identity

The scholarly sources opened for this page concern Tabernaemontana sananho, whose synonyms in the 2023 review include Bonafousia sananho and Tabernaemontana poeppigii. Other published descriptions, including popular ones, name Tabernaemontana undulata instead. None of the peer-reviewed sources opened here analyzed T. undulata or confirmed which species a given community uses for eye drops. The 1984 genus review expected about 100 recognized species, so the botanical name attached to a given preparation needs checking in each source.

Distinction from iboga and ibogaine

Sananga is not iboga. Iboga refers to Tabernanthe iboga, a West African shrub that is the source of the alkaloid ibogaine. Tabernaemontana is a different genus whose species contain related iboga-type alkaloids such as ibogamine, voacangine and coronaridine, which a 2018 phytochemical paper describes as common chemical markers for the genus. The 2023 review warns that some publications wrongly state that ibogaine occurs in T. sananho, whereas the source they cite reports ibogamine, a related compound lacking one methoxy group.

Settings and participants

In the sources reviewed, sananga appears in two overlapping settings. In Huni Kuĩ villages in Acre, the 2023 review reports an ocular application of a preparation from scraped root or bark, which a Huni Kuĩ source likens to eye drops in Western medicine. In urban and international ceremonies, sananga is described as one of several forest medicines, with ayahuasca, rapé and kambô, and survey respondents describe it as often associated with ayahuasca ceremonies.

Reported sensations and the role of the conductor

The 2023 review notes that users report a burning sensation at the moment of ocular application. It also reports a Huni Kuĩ view, cited from Oliveira, that the state of mind of the person conducting the ritual matters, because the energy transmitted during use is thought to affect the recipient. These accounts describe how participants and practitioners understand the experience. They are not measurements.

Scope of this page

This page does not describe how the preparation is made, obtained or applied. Some Indigenous communities deliberately limit the circulation of medicinal knowledge to protect it, as with the Matsés encyclopedia described under Cultural Context, and instructions for placing an unstudied plant liquid in the eye would not be responsible in a reference work.

Traditional attributions in the ethnobotanical literature

The 2023 review lists attributions recorded for T. sananho, which differ by people and plant part and are not all ocular. They include eye wounds in Colombia and rheumatic pain in Brazil from the 1984 review; loss of appetite and skin inflammation among the Aguaruna, who also describe a vision-producing quality they call waimatai in hunters; a snakebite poultice combined with another plant in Peru; and, from Ecuadorian Kichwa work, abscesses, colds, skin conditions, pain relief, contraception, fever, syphilis, a heart tonic and stimulation of hunting dogs.

Huni Kuĩ and Yawanawá accounts

In accounts cited by the 2023 review, Huni Kuĩ speakers describe sananga as removing panema, a term glossed as persistent bad luck or low spirits accompanied by lower-vibration spirits, and as something used by a person who sees deceased relatives, to avoid an overly bold contact with a spirit. A Yawanawá speaker is cited as saying that sananga acts on the material as well as the spiritual, so that good thoughts and good health keep nearby spirits benign. The review also notes a hunting use among the Huni Kuĩ.

Claims in urban and wellness settings

The 2023 review notes a belief in some popular sources that sananga can resolve eye problems such as conjunctivitis, myopia, stye and dry eye, and headaches. It identifies these as popular claims, and no clinical evidence for them was found in the sources opened here. Respondents in the kambô survey, many of whom had also used sananga, cited motivations such as general healing, detoxification and spiritual growth, but that survey asked about kambô, not sananga.

Searches and what was found

A PubMed search for the term sananga returned one record, the kambô survey, in which sananga appears as a keyword and a co-used ritual plant. A PubMed search for Tabernaemontana undulata returned no records. The 2023 integrative review searched PubMed, LILACS and the CAPES journal portal for T. sananho, filtered 37 records and selected 3 that met its criteria. No randomized trial, controlled study or systematic review of sananga eye drops in people was located, and no study of visual acuity, eye disease or other ocular outcomes after use.

Laboratory findings

The 2023 review reports laboratory work that cannot show effects in the human eye. A study of drops produced by Indigenous peoples of the upper Juruá region found antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus epidermidis (inhibitory at 25 percent and bactericidal at 50 percent) and Staphylococcus aureus (100 percent for both), none against Propionibacterium acnes and no antifungal activity against Candida albicans. An ethanolic plant extract showed no significant anti-inflammatory or lipid peroxidation effect in rats. The review calls its overall convergence with the scientific literature inconclusive and says in vitro and in vivo studies are needed.

Chemistry and proposed mechanisms

As summarized in the 2023 review, the 1984 genus review reports five indole alkaloids in T. sananho bark: coronaridine, 3-hydroxycoronaridine, heyneanine, ibogamine and voacangine, with the forms of ibogamine and heyneanine still needing confirmation. The 2023 authors link some analgesic, anti-inflammatory and alertness-related ideas to these alkaloids, including a reported affinity of ibogamine for kappa opioid receptors, but present them as plausible explanations rather than demonstrated effects. They call for newer analyses separating root, stem and leaf, and for studies of drops made in villages.

Reported effects and the absence of safety data

The 2023 review reports a burning sensation at application and suggests caution for people with a sensitive ocular mucosa. No source opened for this page reports a case series, case report, controlled safety study or pharmacovigilance summary on sananga eye drops, and the searches described above found none. The absence of published reports is not evidence of safety: it indicates that no systematic study has been done, so the frequency and seriousness of eye injury or infection are unknown. The kambô survey did not examine sananga adverse events.

The irritant alkaloid and product contents

The authors of the 2023 review point to voacangine, an alkaloid reported in the bark, which a chemical database classifies as an irritant and as acutely harmful by ingestion, inhalation or skin contact (category 4). They suggest this may relate to the burning on application and note it is not known whether voacangine is present in the sap used as drops. None of the sources opened tested the strength, alkaloid content or microbiological quality of drops, so the contents of any given product are undocumented in them.

Ibogaine findings do not transfer directly

Ibogaine, taken systemically, has been linked to cardiac effects. A laboratory study found that ibogaine blocks the hERG potassium channel at low micromolar concentrations and, with computer modeling, concluded that therapeutic concentrations could prolong the QT interval in humans, in some cases leading to arrhythmia. A 2023 systematic review of 12 clinical sources reported severe adverse events with ibogaine, often in unsupervised settings, and concluded that medical, psychiatric and cardiac monitoring is essential. These findings concern ibogaine from Tabernanthe iboga. No source opened shows what eye application of a Tabernaemontana preparation delivers to the body, so they can be neither applied to sananga nor ruled out.

Suitability and care boundaries

The sources opened list no formal contraindications and do not address pregnancy, children, contact lens use, eye surgery or existing eye disease. The 2023 authors note that urban users may combine sananga with other medicines, raising possible interactions, but no interaction studies were found. Sananga has not been established as a treatment for any eye condition. Eye pain, redness or vision change after exposure needs prompt assessment by an eye-care professional, and use should not delay or replace necessary eye or medical care.

Circulation, commodification and differing frameworks

An anthropological study of Huni Kuĩ forest medicines describes their movement into urban rituals as a form of diplomacy between different ontologies. It reports that urban practitioners often present the medicines as responding to individual and collective ills of modern society, while Indigenous leaders frame the work as a spiritual mission, and it names commodification and changes to traditional usage protocols as risks.

The 2023 review states that Indigenous medicine should be assessed first within its own worldview, with Indigenous and Western science treated without hierarchy, and recommends giving priority to studies published by Indigenous authors. It contrasts an Indigenous view of the plant as an agent whose effect depends on relationships between people with a biomedical focus on the substance itself.

Knowledge protection among the Matsés

The Matsés, whom some popular accounts also link to Tabernaemontana eye medicines, offer a documented example of a people protecting medicinal knowledge. Five Matsés shamans wrote a traditional medicine encyclopedia with Acaté Amazon Conservation, each chapter authored by an elder shaman chosen by the community. It is written only in the Matsés language and shared only within Matsés communities, to prevent biopiracy, and its two volumes were completed in 2015 and 2017. The sources do not say what it contains about eye medicines, so this page makes no claim about Matsés use of sananga.