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Plant extracts may interact with conventional drugs, both because they may provide an increased dose of similar compounds, and because some phytochemicals interfere with the body's systems that metabolise drugs in the liver including the cytochrome P450 system, making the drugs last longer in the body and have a cumulative effect. [125]
Although many consumers believe that herbal medicines are safe because they are natural, herbal medicines and synthetic drugs may interact, causing toxicity to the consumer. Herbal remedies can also be dangerously contaminated, and herbal medicines without established efficacy, may unknowingly be used to replace prescription medicines. [38]
Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs obtained from medicinal plants, animals, fungi, and other natural sources. [1] The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical , and biological properties of drugs, drug substances, or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin ...
Ethnomedicine is a study or comparison of the traditional medicine based on bioactive compounds in plants and animals and practiced by various ethnic groups, especially those with little access to western medicines, e.g., indigenous peoples.
Secondary metabolites and pigments may have therapeutic actions in humans, and can be refined to produce drugs; examples are quinine from the cinchona, morphine and codeine from the poppy, and digoxin from the foxglove. [1] In Europe, apothecaries stocked herbal ingredients as traditional medicines.
Herb-drug interactions are drug interactions that occur between herbal medicines and conventional drugs. [18] These types of interactions may be more common than drug-drug interactions because herbal medicines often contain multiple pharmacologically active ingredients, while conventional drugs typically contain only one. [18]
Also, adulteration of some herbal medicine preparations with conventional drugs which may cause serious adverse effects, such as corticosteroids, phenylbutazone, phenytoin, and glibenclamide, has been reported. [44] [45] However, many adverse reactions are due to misuse or abuse of Chinese medicine. [6]
Native American traditional herbal medicine introduced cures for malaria, dysentery, scurvy, non-venereal syphilis, and goiter problems. [20] Many of these herbal and folk remedies continued on through the 19th and into the 20th century, [21] with some plant medicines forming the basis for modern pharmacology. [22]