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Underestimating the Toxicological Challenges Associated with the Use of Herbal Medicinal Products in Developing Countries

Various reports suggest a high contemporaneous prevalence of herb-drug use in both developed and developing countries. The World Health Organisation indicates that 80% of the Asian and African populations rely on traditional medicine as the primary method for their health care needs. Since time imme...

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Autor principal: Neergheen-Bhujun, Vidushi S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3791562/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24163821
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/804086
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author Neergheen-Bhujun, Vidushi S.
author_facet Neergheen-Bhujun, Vidushi S.
author_sort Neergheen-Bhujun, Vidushi S.
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description Various reports suggest a high contemporaneous prevalence of herb-drug use in both developed and developing countries. The World Health Organisation indicates that 80% of the Asian and African populations rely on traditional medicine as the primary method for their health care needs. Since time immemorial and despite the beneficial and traditional roles of herbs in different communities, the toxicity and herb-drug interactions that emanate from this practice have led to severe adverse effects and fatalities. As a result of the perception that herbal medicinal products have low risk, consumers usually disregard any association between their use and any adverse reactions hence leading to underreporting of adverse reactions. This is particularly common in developing countries and has led to a paucity of scientific data regarding the toxicity and interactions of locally used traditional herbal medicine. Other factors like general lack of compositional and toxicological information of herbs and poor quality of adverse reaction case reports present hurdles which are highly underestimated by the population in the developing world. This review paper addresses these toxicological challenges and calls for natural health product regulations as well as for protocols and guidance documents on safety and toxicity testing of herbal medicinal products.
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spelling pubmed-37915622013-10-27 Underestimating the Toxicological Challenges Associated with the Use of Herbal Medicinal Products in Developing Countries Neergheen-Bhujun, Vidushi S. Biomed Res Int Review Article Various reports suggest a high contemporaneous prevalence of herb-drug use in both developed and developing countries. The World Health Organisation indicates that 80% of the Asian and African populations rely on traditional medicine as the primary method for their health care needs. Since time immemorial and despite the beneficial and traditional roles of herbs in different communities, the toxicity and herb-drug interactions that emanate from this practice have led to severe adverse effects and fatalities. As a result of the perception that herbal medicinal products have low risk, consumers usually disregard any association between their use and any adverse reactions hence leading to underreporting of adverse reactions. This is particularly common in developing countries and has led to a paucity of scientific data regarding the toxicity and interactions of locally used traditional herbal medicine. Other factors like general lack of compositional and toxicological information of herbs and poor quality of adverse reaction case reports present hurdles which are highly underestimated by the population in the developing world. This review paper addresses these toxicological challenges and calls for natural health product regulations as well as for protocols and guidance documents on safety and toxicity testing of herbal medicinal products. Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2013 2013-09-19 /pmc/articles/PMC3791562/ /pubmed/24163821 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/804086 Text en Copyright © 2013 Vidushi S. Neergheen-Bhujun. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Review Article
Neergheen-Bhujun, Vidushi S.
Underestimating the Toxicological Challenges Associated with the Use of Herbal Medicinal Products in Developing Countries
title Underestimating the Toxicological Challenges Associated with the Use of Herbal Medicinal Products in Developing Countries
title_full Underestimating the Toxicological Challenges Associated with the Use of Herbal Medicinal Products in Developing Countries
title_fullStr Underestimating the Toxicological Challenges Associated with the Use of Herbal Medicinal Products in Developing Countries
title_full_unstemmed Underestimating the Toxicological Challenges Associated with the Use of Herbal Medicinal Products in Developing Countries
title_short Underestimating the Toxicological Challenges Associated with the Use of Herbal Medicinal Products in Developing Countries
title_sort underestimating the toxicological challenges associated with the use of herbal medicinal products in developing countries
topic Review Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3791562/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24163821
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/804086
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