ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to assess the concomitant use of herbal remedies and prescribe medications and to evaluate the most important potential interactions. Pharmacovigilance is essential for developing reliable information on the safety of herbal medicines as used in Europe and the US. Systematic pharmacovigilance is essential to build up reliable information on the safety of herbal medicines for the development of appropriate guidelines for safe effective use. Phytopharmacovigilance is an emerging issue addressing key factors related to the Phyto or herbal drug industry. Although Pharmacovigilance best suits the synthetic pharmaceutical drug industry and vigilance issues related to Phyto or herbal drugs is part of the conventional pharmaceutical drug industry. The herbal drug industry should embrace DNA bar-coding for authenticating herbal products through testing of raw materials used in manufacturing products. The use of an SRM DNA herbal barcode library for testing bulk materials could provide a method for 'best practices' in the manufacturing of herbal products.
