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Why is Research on Herbal Medicinal Products Important and How Can We Improve Its Quality?
Research on herbal medicinal products is increasingly published in “Western” scientific journals dedicated primarily to conventional medicines. Publications are concerned mainly not only on the issues of safety and interactions, but also on efficacy. In reviews, a recurring complaint has been a lack...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4032837/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24872927 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/2225-4110.124323 |
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author | Pelkonen, Olavi Xu, Qihe Fan, Tai-Ping |
author_facet | Pelkonen, Olavi Xu, Qihe Fan, Tai-Ping |
author_sort | Pelkonen, Olavi |
collection | PubMed |
description | Research on herbal medicinal products is increasingly published in “Western” scientific journals dedicated primarily to conventional medicines. Publications are concerned mainly not only on the issues of safety and interactions, but also on efficacy. In reviews, a recurring complaint has been a lack of quality studies. In this opinion article, we present the case of Chinese herbal medicines as an example, as they have been extensively used in the global market and increasingly studied worldwide. We analyze the potential reasons for problems and propose some ways forward. As in the case of any drug, clinical trials for safety, efficacy, and/or effectiveness are the ultimate demonstration of therapeutic usefulness of herbal products. These will only make scientific sense when the tested herbal products are authentic, standardized, and quality controlled, if good practice guidelines of evidence-based medicine are followed, and if relevant controls and outcome measures are scientifically defined. Herbal products are complex mixtures, and for such complexity, an obvious approach for mechanistic studies is network pharmacology based on omic tools and approaches, which has already begun to revolutionize the study of conventional drugs, emphasizing networks, interactions, and polypharmacological features behind the action of many drugs. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4032837 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-40328372014-05-28 Why is Research on Herbal Medicinal Products Important and How Can We Improve Its Quality? Pelkonen, Olavi Xu, Qihe Fan, Tai-Ping J Tradit Complement Med Perspective Research on herbal medicinal products is increasingly published in “Western” scientific journals dedicated primarily to conventional medicines. Publications are concerned mainly not only on the issues of safety and interactions, but also on efficacy. In reviews, a recurring complaint has been a lack of quality studies. In this opinion article, we present the case of Chinese herbal medicines as an example, as they have been extensively used in the global market and increasingly studied worldwide. We analyze the potential reasons for problems and propose some ways forward. As in the case of any drug, clinical trials for safety, efficacy, and/or effectiveness are the ultimate demonstration of therapeutic usefulness of herbal products. These will only make scientific sense when the tested herbal products are authentic, standardized, and quality controlled, if good practice guidelines of evidence-based medicine are followed, and if relevant controls and outcome measures are scientifically defined. Herbal products are complex mixtures, and for such complexity, an obvious approach for mechanistic studies is network pharmacology based on omic tools and approaches, which has already begun to revolutionize the study of conventional drugs, emphasizing networks, interactions, and polypharmacological features behind the action of many drugs. Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd 2014 /pmc/articles/PMC4032837/ /pubmed/24872927 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/2225-4110.124323 Text en Copyright: © Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Perspective Pelkonen, Olavi Xu, Qihe Fan, Tai-Ping Why is Research on Herbal Medicinal Products Important and How Can We Improve Its Quality? |
title | Why is Research on Herbal Medicinal Products Important and How Can We Improve Its Quality? |
title_full | Why is Research on Herbal Medicinal Products Important and How Can We Improve Its Quality? |
title_fullStr | Why is Research on Herbal Medicinal Products Important and How Can We Improve Its Quality? |
title_full_unstemmed | Why is Research on Herbal Medicinal Products Important and How Can We Improve Its Quality? |
title_short | Why is Research on Herbal Medicinal Products Important and How Can We Improve Its Quality? |
title_sort | why is research on herbal medicinal products important and how can we improve its quality? |
topic | Perspective |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4032837/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24872927 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/2225-4110.124323 |
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