Protocols on safety, efficacy, standardization, and documentation of herbal medicine (IUPAC Technical Report)

Abstract

This Technical Report compiles and analyzes the current scientific knowledge on herbal medicine and highlights the practical ways for ensuring the safety of herbal preparations and evaluating their claimed efficacy. Emphasis has been given to the methods for standardization of herbal medicine and the ways and means for moving forward to achieve the difficult goal of preparing herbal medicines of consistent quality and effects. Pragmatic approaches have been recommended to overcome the difficulties in (i) protecting intellectual property rights (IPR); (ii) producing safe, potent, standardized, and affordable herbal medicine; and (iii) documenting the knowledge base on herbal medicine in an easily accessible format.

The relevance of pharmacognosy in pharmacological research on herbal medicinal products

“…It is estimated that 70% of the world's population do not have access to conventional medicine and, therefore, rely on traditional treatments including herbal medicines as their primary source of health care [5,7]. For example, Ayurvedic medicine in India, Kampo medicine in Japan, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and Unani medicine in the Middle East and South Asia are still used by the majority of people [8]. Because of their affordability, local availability, and potential sustainability, the importance of traditional herbal preparations is increasing in these current times of exploding health-care costs and ubiquitous austerity [5,7,9].…”

“…Moreover, in the recent era of herbal renaissance, the demand for traditional herbal medicines and other botanicals has been steadily increasing over the past two decades also in the industrialized countries [8]. Because of their complex composition, the constituents of herbal extracts and mixtures are supposed to interact in an additive or even synergistic way, thereby mutually enhancing solubility and bioavailability or simultaneously interacting with multiple disease-related targets, but in a more moderate way than single compounds hitting single targets [5,[10][11][12].…”

Standardization of Anticonvulsant Polyherbal Formulation by Pharmacognostical, Dna Fingerprinting and High-Performance Thin Layer Chromatography Combined With Chemometrics

“…The World Health Organization estimates that 70-80% of people worldwide rely chiefly on traditional, largely herbal medicines to meet their primary health care needs. All medicines, whether synthetic or of plant origin, should fulfil the basic requirements of being safe and effective [1,2]. Standardisation of herbal medicines is the process of prescribing a set of standards or inherent characteristics, constant parameters and definitive qualitative and quantitative values that carry an assurance of quality, efficacy, safety, and reproducibility.…”

A novel HPTLC method for quantitative estimation of biomarkers in polyherbal formulation

“…Standardization is a system ensuring predefined set of the quantity, quality and therapeutic effect of the constituents in each dose [11]. It is an imperative stride in establishing a quality assurance plan for production and manufacturing thereby, curtailing batch to batch variation and reassuring acceptability, safety, quality and efficacy of the polyherbal formulations [12][13][14][15]. The validation of plant based drugs and recognition of adulterants from authentic curative herbs are important for both pharmaceutical industries and community health [16].…”