An overview on safety issues of interactions between traditional herbal medicines and pharmaceutical medicines

The increasing popularity world-wide of using herbal medicinal materials (HMM) from ethnic traditional medicine such as the widely used Chinese materia medica (CMM) or other ethnic herbal medicines and related proprietary health products (PHP), functional food and prescription herbal medicines has raised concerns over their concomitant use with pharmaceutical medicines (PHARMED) and the consequential adverse effects. In most cases the alleged causes of adverse effects are linked with herbal substances, although the authoritive information on the interactions between HMM/PHP and PHARMED is not plentiful in the literature. There is an urgent need for such a data base. In the 21st century, the public are more informed, from the Internet, about health and medical products and become more knowledgeable about matters relating to their health conditions and well-being in curing and preventing illnesses. They often self-medicate themselves with various health products as well as those over-the-counter (OTC) PHARMED. Some of theses products may have doubtful quality control and contain harmful additives or unchecked ingredients. The future professionals in health and medical care should be knowledgeable or aware of what their patients have been taking or given. Their combining medications may be involved with possible outcomes of adverse reactions or beneficial effects. In actual practice the patients may receive both treatments intentionally or unintentionally, with or without the awareness of the practitioner. In these situations an available authoritive database for interactions between HMM/PHP or prescribed PHARMED will be extremely useful for consultation when treatment problems appear or during emergency situations. Such a database will be welcomed by both practitioners of herbal medicines and orthodox medicine (OM) practitioners. The author has been involved in various research projects of basic and clinical aspects in mainly Chinese medicines among other herbal and pharmaceutical medicines hence examples will be given largely on those related to these disciplines as illustrations in this overview. It is envisaged that some of the safety issues and all other aspects discussed in the following texts are also relevant to other traditional or ethnic medicines.