Drug interactions with complementary medicines

Abstract

Health professionals are expected to be familiar with common and clinically significant complementary medicine interactions or at least know where to look them up. Knowing the dynamic and kinetic interactions associated with commonly used complementary medicines helps to identify the risk of drug interactions. Although information on complementary medicine interactions is not readily provided by the manufacturers, evidence is available by way of case reports, independent research and webbased resources, which have increased in recent years. Collectively, these data make interactions with complementary medicines largely predictable and therefore preventable.