As more and more people worldwide begin using Chinese herbs, authentication of these herbs becomes an increasingly critical, international problem. Mistakes, misidentification, or willful deception can cause illness and even death. Questionable authenticity with regard to Chinese herbs arises for a number of historical, geographical and nomenclatural reasons, which will be described in this pap...

Herbal medicines are being used with greater frequency by practitioners of natural medicine in the United States. Many categories of herbs are used, primarily angiotensin antagonists, nonspecific nephroprotective, and immunomodulating/adaptogenic herbs. The most common herbs in each category are discussed both from a historical and scientific perspective. For the first time, a case series of th...

Herbs and berry crops have been shown to contain high levels of antioxidant compounds. These antioxidants are capable of performing a number of functions including acting as free radical scavengers, peroxide decomposers, singlet and triplet oxygen quenchers, enzyme inhibitors, and synergists. The different antioxidant components found in herbs and berry crops provide protection against harmful ...

For thousands of years, tonic herbs have been successfully used all around the world to improve health, energy, and vitality. However, their underlying mechanisms of action in molecular/systems levels are still a mystery. In this work, two sets of tonic herbs, so called Qi-enriching herbs (QEH) and Blood-tonifying herbs (BTH) in TCM, were selected to elucidate why they can restore proper balanc...

The ability to classify distinctive odor pattern for aromatic plants species provides significant impact in food industry especially for herbs. Each herbs species has a unique physicochemical and a distinctive odors. This project emphasizes on the techniques of artificial intelligence (AI) to distinguish distinctive odor pattern for herbs. Neural Network method has been exploited for the classi...

The rapidly increasing incidence of diabetes mellitus (DM) is becoming a major public health issue. As one of the important parts in complementary and alternative therapies, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is promising in treating DM. In this review, we summarize new thoughts on treating DM that aim to improve the clinical efficacy of TCM from the perspectives of principle, methods, formula,...

Background. Chinese medicinal herbs may be useful for the treatment of hyperuricemia, but there has been no systematic assessment of their efficacy and safety. Objectives. To systematically assess the efficacy and safety of Chinese medicinal herbs for the treatment of hyperuricemia. Methods. Six electronic databases were searched from their inception to December 2015. Randomized controlled clin...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND Some Chinese herbs contain several kinds of phytoestrogens, and these herbs are commonly prescribed in Taiwan. Phytoestrogens may influence the effects of estrogen in females, although their activities are weak. This study aims to identify the risk and analyze the prescription profile of commonly used phytoestrogenic herbs in Taiwan. METHODS The study analyzed women w...

Background: There is a worldwide effort to present novel approaches for the development of tolerance-induction treatments in regenerative medicine, after years of investigation in clinical transplantation. Particularly, novel approaches are based on controlling the immune response, including the application of biomaterials or imitation of antigen-specific peripheral tolerance in either solid-or...