HDI Highlighter, The First Intelligent Tool to Screen the Literature on Herb–Drug Interactions

Abstract

Herbal food supplements are commonly used and can be an important part of patient self-care. Like all other bio-active and therapeutic products, they have a benefit/risk balance. These products are not without adverse effects and potentially interact with other therapies. Educating patients and providing information for health professionals about the risk of herb-drug interactions is key. One of the purposes of the biomedical literature is to inform prescribers. Scientific literature accessible on databases such as PubMed is dense and careful reading is time consuming. We propose a reading aid tool named "HDI highlighter" to help readers to find key information in clinical studies and case reports describing herb-drug interactions. It uses natural language processing algorithms (artificial intelligence) with a pharmaceutical focus. Semantic relation extraction for herb-drug interactions from the biomedical literature are overexpressed using keywords. We have tested it to review 120 published articles over the last 10 years. In these articles, we have shown that case reports often involved long-term or semi-long-term treatments such as cancer or human immunodeficiency virus therapies, antiepileptic drugs, or central nervous system drugs. Similarly, these classes of drugs are more extensively targeted by clinical studies. Herb-drug interactions described in case reports are identified in medicinal, recreational, and alimentary uses. They also usually lack a rigorous description of the herb(s) involved. Typically, clinical studies provide a complete description of protocols and dosages, with a few exceptions explained by patients' needs. Clinical studies on herbs are nevertheless conducted on a limited number of patients. All these limitations make the interpretation of herb-drug interactions complicated, but the HDI highlighter provides a quick overview of the herb-drug interaction literature.

Knowledge and Beliefs about Herb/Supplement Consumption and Herb/Supplement–Drug Interactions among the General Population, including Healthcare Professionals and Pharmacists: A Systematic Review and Guidelines for a Smart Decision System

“…Moreover, the available literature on herbs/supplements and HDIs is constantly updated, making it difficult for experts to thoroughly review it all. Therefore, the existence of dependable resources that can keep healthcare professionals up to date on possible harmful interactions is crucial [ 53 ].…”

Evaluation and clinical implications of interactions between compound Danshen dropping pill and warfarin associated with the epoxide hydrolase gene

“…Sales of herbal supplements in the USA were more than $8 billion in $2017 and $9.6 billion in 2019 ( Suroowan et al, 2021 ). In 2020, the world trade in medicinal plants was $138.35 billion and is expected to reach $218.94 billion by 2026 ( Cnudde et al, 2022 ; Hossain et al, 2022 ). Furthermore, an estimated one-third of adults in developed countries and approximately 75%–80% of the population in developing countries consume herbal medicines for primary healthcare ( Claure-Del Granado and Espinosa-Cuevas, 2021 ).…”

Toxicity Derived from Interaction between Natural Compounds and Cancer Therapeutic Drugs Metabolized by CYP3A4: Lessons Learned from Two Clinical Case Reports

“…Gathering reliable information on the clinical utility of many NPs or CAM is very difficult, scattershot, and uneven; in most cases, there is no opportunity to perform a structured search similar to that which we set up for regular drugs. Innovative tools, such as the HDI Highlighter opensource software, freely available on the Internet [22], can help expedite the identification of the text portions of published scientific research, in which there are references to herbal components, metabolic pathways, and interactions that may be clinically relevant [23]. Gougis et al, in their comprehensive review, provide us with a schematic summary of the possible interactions (known to date) between herbs, drugs, and dietary supplements involving the inhibition or induction of different cytochromes, along with a classification of the levels of evidence that support this knowledge.…”