Quality Control for Medicinal Plants

Herbal medicine is not only easy accessible at low prices for primary health care, but also can serve as valuable reservoir for pharmacological drug development [1]. Remarkably, a majority of the world’s population cannot afford the costs for western-style drugs. This is especially true for Third World countries. Hence, it does not come as a surprise that traditional medicines are far distributed on the globe [2]. On the other hand, it is estimated that there are between 30,000-70,000 medicinal plants worldwide, most of which have not been scientifically analyzed [3]. Since prehistoric times, herbal medicines are used without the rigorous rules necessary to register drugs nowadays. As a consequence, safety and efficacy of medicinal plants have been challenged by western academic medicine. Therefore, development of evidence-based traditional medicines seems to be the only option to convince skeptic western physicians.