Quality Control for Medicinal Plants

Abstract

The scientific basis of evidence-based medicine is still poor in herbal medicine. For the integration of herbal medicine into western medicine, internationally accepted standards are necessitated, including quality control of herbal products as well as preclinical and clinical evidence of safety and efficacy. In recent years, thriving innovative technologies emerged in phytotherapy research, e.g. DNA-based technologies for the authentication of plant species, good practice guidelines for standardized experimentations. High-quality herbal materials should undergo rigorous examination by analytical techniques for chemoprofiling of medicinal herbs, as well as toxicological methods to detect contaminations. The state of the art, which is necessary for the pharmaceutical use of medicinal herbs, is documented in monographs of national and international pharmacopeias. The thriving advances in molecular biology also affect phytotherapy research, which benefits from novel technologies of systems biology. Detection of bioactivity in animal experiments is a precondition to perform clinical trials in human patients. A sound basis of evidence for the safety and efficacy of herbal medicines will foster their integration into western medicine. Keywords: