In India, Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani (ASU) systems of medicine are considered to be the oldest system of medicines. They prescribe drugs of herbal, mineral, metallic and animal origin for the treatment of many diseases. Being time tested systems of medicine and majority of the drugs used by them are of herbal origin these systems are considered to be safe. The use of ASU medicines continues to ...

Systems pharmacology is an emerging field that integrates systems biology and pharmacology to advance the process of drug discovery, development and the understanding of therapeutic mechanisms. The aim of the present work is to highlight the role that the systems pharmacology plays across the traditional herbal medicines discipline, which is exemplified by a case study of botanical drugs applie...

Herbal medicine is widely used worldwide and is associated with side-effects such as skin eruptions. Herbal drugs are often produced by combining multiple crude drugs, mostly of plant origin. Determining which medi-cinal plants are associated with the herbal drugs that induce skin eruptions can therefore be difficult. This study investigated mRNA expression of several cytokines in peripheral mo...

BACKGROUND Chemicals of herbal products may cause unexpected toxicity or adverse effect by the potential for alteration of the activity of CYP450 when co-administered with other drugs. Eleutherococcus senticosus (ES), has been widely used as a traditional herbal medicine and popular herbal dietary supplements, and often co-administered with many other drugs. The main bioactive constituents of E...

This parallel, randomized, double blind clinical trial was designed to compare allopathic drugs [a combination of metronidazole + diloxanide furoate (MDF)] with Endemali (herbal product) for therapeutic cure rate and side effects in order to find out the most suitable drug for this killer disease. This double blind randomized clinical trial was conducted in two areas of Karachi, Pakistan after ...

The adulteration and Substitution of the herbal drugs is the burning problem in herbal industry and it has caused a major treat in the research on commercial natural products. The deforestation and extinction of many species and incorrect identification of many plants has resulted in adulteration and substitution of raw drugs. The concept of substitution prevailed ages back and in Ayurveda we c...

Standardization of herbal drugs is the need of the hour as the use and practice of traditional herbal drugs has increased tremendously. The main objective of the present study is to standardize the root tubers of Aconitum heterophyllum as per pharmacopoeial testing protocol which include powder microscopy, physico-chemical screening, HPTLC fingerprinting and GC-MS analysis. Preliminary phytoche...

Two preparations of herbal shampoo powder were formulated using some common traditional drugs used by folk and traditional people of Bundelkhand region (M.P) India, for hair care. The preparations were formulated using bahera, amla, neem tulsi, shikakai henna & brahmi evaluated for organoleptic, powder charecterestics, foam test and physical evaluation. As the selected drugs being used since lo...

The risk of interaction between dietary supplements, herbal drugs and synthetic drugs increases when patients are treated chronically, e.g. due to impairment of central nervous system (CNS)--depression, psychotic disorders, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. On the basis of scientific literature, there was shown that simultaneous intake of antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs and herbal drug...

This review highlights the current advances in knowledge about the safety, efficacy, quality control, marketing and regulatory aspects of botanical medicines. Phytotherapeutic agents are standardized herbal preparations consisting of complex mixtures of one or more plants which contain as active ingredients plant parts or plant material in the crude or processed state. A marked growth in the wo...