10 Quality and Safety of Herbal Medicinal Products

Abstract

The World Health Organization defines herbal medicines as plant-derived materials orpreparations intended for human therapeutic use or for other health benefits in hu-mans [1, 2]. Nevertheless, most of the traditional herbal formulations also contain ani-mal material and/or mineral compounds. Herbal products are consumed raw as tea oras concentrated extracts (decoctions), applied as a paste or powder on skin, or some-times available as pills or liquids. The global trend in returning to natural or alternativetherapies has dramatically increased the use of plant based-medicines and other bota-nicals over the past few years. A large number of botanicals have been transformedinto various pharmaceutical forms like tablets, capsules, powders, and syrups, whilesome have been developed into cosmeceuticals, fragrances, dietary supplements, andnutraceuticals. Although plant based-medicines are traditionally considered harmlessand thus extensively being utilized by people without prescriptions, the number of re-ports on health issues associated with herbal medicines could not be neglected. Thepresence of contaminants or adulterants, as well as inherent toxicity of plant ingre-dients, may cause direct toxic effects, interactions with other drugs, or reduce the effi-cacy of herbal formulations. Therefore, assessment of the safety and standardizationof herbal formulations is one of the priority areas in herbal medicinal research, and itrequires comprehensive phytochemical and pharmacological studies [3, 4].