Research on herbs is of great interest due to their health benefits. They can also provide an effective alternative strategy in healthcare, especially in the developing world. Herbal medicines for the treatment of diseases are becoming increasingly popular with herbal remedies becoming common medicines in many homes around the world. The misconception that herbal medicines are devoid of adverse or toxic effects normally associated with conventional medicines may be one reason for the increased use. Recent investigations have raised concerns about the quality, efficacy, and safety profiles of herbal remedies. The increased morbidity and mortality associated with the use of herbs in the last few years coupled with minimal regulatory checks on their use have brought attention to herbal quality and safety. One potential problem is that herbal preparations, assumed to be safe, could be contaminated with microbial and foreign material (e.g. heavy metals, pesticide residues, aflatoxins etc.) during production. Such contaminants are a potential health risk to consumers. Furthermore, little is known about whether there are undesirable effects associated with the habitual use of herbal remedies. Therefore, the safety evaluation of herbal products is necessary since the popular belief that herbal remedies are without toxic or undesirable effects has been proven otherwise.
In particular, safety assessment is required to mitigate against the potential risk of inherent toxicity of plant materials, adulteration, plant misidentification, and contamination. In addition, many herbal products are untested, and therefore, there is not sufficient information on potential adverse reactions, contraindi-cations, interactions, and modes of action to support a safe and rational use of these products.
The use of plants have been passed down orally from generation to generation. Plants with medicinal properties has provided people access to immediate and effective therapy, especially in developing countries. However, the upsurge in the popularity and patronage of herbal medicines and products, both in developing and developed countries, requires a more rigorous understanding of the safety and long and short term toxicity of herbal drugs.
To this end, we invite investigators to contribute original research and review articles that seek to address the quality, efficacy, and safety of herbal medicine used as a form of complementary and alternative medicine. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
1. Contamination of herbs by microbial and/or heavy metals
2. Methods of therapeutic evaluation of herbs as used in medicines
3. Safety and toxicity evaluation of herbal medicines
4. Identification and characterization of herbal mixtures
5. Pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of herbal remedies
6. Dose standardization of herbal remedies. Dose standardization by adjusting the herbal drug preparation to a defined content of a constituent or a group of substances with known therapeutic activity resulting from adding excipients or by mixing herbal drugs or herbal drug preparations.
All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here.