The dried seeds from this plant are used in traditional medicine throughout West Africa, particularly in Ghana as well as in the Ivory Coast and Nigeria.

[9][10] An enterprising Ghanaian hospital started manufacturing and selling standardized 250 mg capsules of the powdered P. nitida seed, which then became a widely used palliative.

Picralima nitida seeds contain a complex mixture of alkaloids producing antipyretic and antiinflammatory effects along with analgesia in animal studies.

[11] Several of these were shown to bind to opioid receptors with weak affinity in vitro, and two compounds, akuammidine and ψ-akuammigine, were found to be μ-opioid agonists, although not particularly selective.

[12][13] More recently, it has been shown that an additional constitutive analog, acuammicine, has potent activity as a kappa opioid receptor agonist.