Herbal medicines are increasingly used in both western and Chinese societies. This is partly attributed to the alleged limitations of scientific medicine in the cure and control of chronic diseases. Many patients do not disclose that they have used herbs before surgery and hence their physicians remain unaware of the potential herb-drug interactions. With respect to anaesthesia, herbs can cause...

Lida Teng, BSc, is a PhD student at the Centre for Pharmacognosy and Phytotherapy, School of Pharmacy, University of London; Debbie Shaw, BSc, is a research scientist at the Medical Toxicology Unit, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London; and Joanne Barnes, PhD, MRPharmS, is associate professor in herbal medicines at the School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medical and Health Scie...

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) with its focus on herbal use became popular worldwide. Treatment was perceived as safe, with neglect of rare adverse reactions including liver injury. To compile worldwide cases of liver injury by herbal TCM, we undertook a selective literature search in the PubMed database and searched for the items Traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM, Traditional Asian Medicin...

Ethnopharmacological relevanceViticis Fructus (called Manjingzi in China) is the dried ripe fruits of plant species Vitex trifolia subsp. litoralis Steenis and L. family Lamiaceae. Viticis has been used as a traditional Chinese medicine for thousands years to treat illness such colds, headache, vertigo, anesthesia, hyperkinesias. More chemical constituents medicinal effects have discovered with...

BACKGROUND Probably related to immune dysfunction, psoriasis vulgaris is a chronic, painful, disfiguring and disabling dermatological disease, carrying an increased risk of serious comorbidities. Current conventional therapies can be costly, show risks of side effects and have limited efficacy, with relapse common on treatment cessation. Chinese herbal medicine is effective in treating psoriasi...

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) are found in various plant genera worldwide. Poisoning by PA-containing plants is usually accidental, by the ingestion of grain inadvertently contaminated with seeds of pyrrolizidine-containing weeds, or the consumption of herbal or bush tea, or when taken as herbal infusions for medicinal purposes. In this paper the toxicity of PA-containing plants, with emphasis ...

Herbal medicine use is thought to be linked to nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) either through its ability to reactivate the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) or through a direct promoting effect on EBV-transformed cells. To investigate this, 104 histologically confirmed NPC cases and 205 matched controls were studied in The Philippines. Blood was collected to assess antibody titers against EBV, and an in...

objective: garlic is a plant has been used as a flavor, and anti-microbial and anti-diarrheal agent. infectious bronchitis virus (ibv) is a coronavirus. the available vaccines against ibv cannot cover new variants. this study evaluated the inhibitory effects of garlic extract on ibv.  materials and methods: the constituents of garlic extract were detected by gas chromatography. this study was d...

pre-menstrual syndrome is one of the most common disorders in women and causes impairment in work and social relationships. several treatment modalities have been proposed, one of which is herbal medicines. considering the properties of wheat germ, this study aimed to determine the effects of wheat germ extract on the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome.this triple blind clinical trial was conduc...

polyphenols have been shown to have some of the neuroprotective effects against neurodegenerative diseases. these effects are attributed to a variety of biological activities, including free radical scavenging/antioxidant and anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic activities. in this regard, many efforts have been made to study the effects of various well-known dietary polyphenols on spinal cord ...