Dietary Supplements, Botanicals and Herbs at The Interface of Food and Medicine

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Background

Our Research Topic focuses on the relationship between dietary supplements, traditional medicinal plants, herbal medicines, and health foods from a global and interdisciplinary perspective with the aim of understanding their potential health benefits. The use of herbs and medicinal plants in new formulations of dietary supplements should be explored. The beneficial properties of medicinal plants (often ones currently restricted to one country or region) trigger interest in the possibility of developing novel nutraceutical formulations, which can help to support health conditions reducing the need for pharmacological interventions, in particular for individuals who do not qualify for conventional drug-based treatment.

We would especially welcome studies on the following areas:

• Interdisciplinary approaches of emerging and innovative techniques with chemometrics - Chemometrics opened a new scenario for herbal drugs i.e. in the production of quantified (or standardized) formulations, authentication of individual herbs, monitoring of the quality of herbs and herb medicines, detection of adulteration or contamination of herbs in the perspective of metrology approach.

• Studies on the description and exploitation of bioactive compounds i.e. antioxidants in medicinal plants as well as on physiological mechanism and bioaccessibility of compounds. Research characterizing the product’s properties to respond to the specifications of regulatory bodies like EMA and FDA are welcome and should address this in a pharmacological context.

• The application of nanotechnologies in the perspective of novel nano-formulation plant-based with improved bioavailability, solubility, and efficacy is also of interest.

• Studies of medicinal plants using ‘large data’ e.g. extracted from healthcare or other databases e.g. dietary supplement ones, including the application of classification systems, harmonization, and coding procedures is a new frontier we want to encourage.

• Foods as medicinal plants - investigating the functional/nutraceutical characteristics of foods in order to integrate intrinsic nutritional properties.

• The use of food waste as a sustainable alternative source of biologically active compounds for botanicals.

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While this Research Topic is at the interface of food and medicine the focus needs to be on pharmacological aspects i.e. specific health benefits including the compositional requirements. Food uses as such and studies looking at general benefits without a specific pharmacological angle will not be considered for publication.

Additionally, please note that all the manuscripts submitted to this project will be peer-reviewed and need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here).

Keywords: dietary supplements, nutraceuticals, dietary supplements labeling, chemometrics, dietary supplement databases, metrology, control quality;, food

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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