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Clinical Pharmacognosy Series
Botanical medicines are rapidly increasing in global recognition with significant public health and economic implications. For instance, in developing countries, a vast majority of the indigenous populations use medicinal plants as a major form of healthcare. Also, in industrialized nations, including Europe and North America, consumers are increasingly using herbs and botanical dietary supplements as part of integrative health and complementary and alternative therapies. Moreover, the paradigm shifts occurring in modern medicine, from mono-drug to multi-drug and poly-pharmaceutical therapies, has led to renewed interest in botanical medicines and botanical drugs.
This is due, in part, to a basic underpinning of botanical medicines which is that a complex matrix of multiple compounds within an extract elicits multiple biological actions and the activity of a major compound may be potentiated by multiple minor constituents. In short, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’. However, the widespread use and resurgence in the popularity of herbal medicines raises concerns about clinical efficacy, quality, safety, dosing, and the potential for herb-herb, herb-food, and herb-drug interactions.
Pharmacognosy, the study of drugs from natural sources, plays a critical role in the process of ensuring authenticity, purity, and consistency of botanicals, and also for developing tools and models for determining their mechanisms and modes of action, doses, toxicity, and safety. The cross-fertilization of classical pharmacognosy with modern chemical and biological approaches, and their applications in a clinical setting, has led to the Clinical Pharmacognosy series which seeks to disseminate emerging research, and discuss challenges and opportunities on the aforementioned issues.