BACKGROUND Liáng chá ("cooling tea", "herbal tea" or "cool tisane" in Chinese) are herbal drinks widely produced in southern China and consumed by billions of people worldwide to prevent and treat internal heat as well as a range of associated health conditions. Globalization and renewed interest in botanical remedies has attracted growing attention in cooling herbal drinks by industry, scienti...

Medicinal plants and derived medicine are widely used in traditional cultures all over the world and they are becoming increasingly popular in modern society as natural alternatives to synthetic chemicals. Alpinia galanga willd. (familyzingiberaceae) commonly known as galanga, is an important cultivated medicinal crop of India. Herbal medicine consists active ingredients in crude form or as an ...

In the past decades, the use of traditional medicine has increased globally, leading to a booming herbal medicine and dietary supplement industry. The increased popularity of herbal products has led to a rise in demand for botanical raw materials. Accurate identification of medicinal herbs is a legal requirement in most countries and prerequisite for delivering a quality product that meets cons...

As per the estimates of World Health Organization (WHO) about 80% of world’s population depends on plant and plant products for their primary healthcare. Recently the demand for herbal drugs has increased many folds at the global level, as these herbal medicines do not have any side effects and its cost effectiveness. Huge quantities of solid waste is generated during the production of decoctio...

Correct identification of medicinal plant ingredients is essential for their safe use and for the regulation of herbal drug supply chain. Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a recently developed approach to identify herbal medicine species. This novel molecular biology technique enables timely and accurate testing, especially in settings where infrastructures to support polymerase ...

Herbal based medicines are used for the treatment of many diseases from ancient times while pharmaceutical chemistry is recently developed. Usually Herbal medicines have been delivered orally in both animals and human. Targeted drug-delivery systems currently more common for the treatment of most life threatening diseases such as cancers. In addition to drug eluting devices many nano based devi...

In this contribution, an overview on the current legal requirements regarding limits for heavy metals in plant material is given, drawing particular attention to the limits for lead, cadmium and mercury in herbal drugs proposed for the European Pharmacopoeia (Ph. Eur.). A new set of data resulting from about 7100 samples of herbal drugs (fresh and dried) tested for lead and cadmium and about 25...

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 ...

BACKGROUND Herbal medicine is a popular part of primary health care in Switzerland. Following an ethnobotanical approach, in this study we seek to identify Swiss herbalists with broad, empirical medicinal plant knowledge and use. We aim to consider different areas of the medicinal landscape including biomedicine, complementary and alternative medicine, and self-medication. MATERIAL AND METHOD...

Orthosiphon stamineus Benth. is a medicinal herb belonging to the family Lamiaceae, grown in Southeast Asia. Leaves of this plant are used commonly in Southeast Asia and European countries for herbal tea, well known as “Java tea”. Traditionally leaves of this plant have been used as diuretic, and to treat rheumatism, abdominal pain, kidney and bladder inflammation, edema and gout. Studies have ...