A major safety concern with the use of herbal medicinal products (HMP) is their interactions with conventional medicines, which are often mediated via the cytochrome P450 (CYP) system. Echinacea is a widely used over-the-counter HMP, with proven immunomodulatory properties. Its increasing use makes research into its safety an urgent concern. Previously, we showed that Echinacea extracts and its...

The present research was planned to characterize the aroma composition of important members of the Lamiaceae family such as Salvia officinalis, Lavandula angustifolia and Mentha asiatica. Aroma components of the S. officinalis, L. angustifolia and M. asiatica were extracted with the purge and trap technique with dichloromethane and analyzed with the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) ...

Article history: Received 6 March 2008 Received in revised form 3 July 2008 Accepted 5 July 2008 The aim of the present trial was to evaluate the effect of repeated short-time applications of Echinacea purpurea juice as feed additive to initiate an immune response. In a trial with 70 white layers (LSL) two Echinacea juices as feed additives were tested for their influence on feed intake, perfor...

BACKGROUND Cassia angustifolia Vahl. (commonly known as senna makkai or cassia senna), native to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen and also extensively cultivated in Pakistan, is a medicinal herb used traditionally to cure number of diseases like liver diseases, constipation, typhoid, cholera etc. This study was conducted to evaluate the in-vitro antimicrobial, antioxidant and anticancer assays and ph...

Recently, detection of antioxidant activity of plant extracts has caught the attention of researchers. Determination of antioxidant activity is usually performed using stable free radicals. A number of assays is available for screening the antioxidant activity of food constituents, but few of these methods are applicable to lipophilic substances. EPR is the analytical technique that directly me...

This review evaluates the safety of echinacea and elderberry in pregnancy. Both herbs are commonly used to prevent or treat upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) and surveys have shown that they are also used by pregnant women. The electronic databases PubMed, ISI Web of Science, AMED, EMBASE, Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, and Cochrane Library were searched from inception to No...

Background Preparations from Echinacea are among the best-selling phytopharmaceuticals worldwide and have been widely used for the treatment of common cold and various upper respiratory infections. The most relevant active principles of Echinacea extracts are alkamides, caffeic acid derivatives (CADs) and glycoproteins/polysaccharides [1]. The main alkamides in Echinacea preparations are the is...