Herbal medicine: current progress, and challenges

Abstract

: Phytomedicine or herbal medicines have played an important role in disease treatment because of high therapeutic potential and better patient compliance. Although the practice of phytomedicne greatly affected during the dawn of the scientific era, there is a revival of interest in its potential by late 20th century, especially in the search of new drugs. Herbal drugs and its derivatives represent more than 50% of entire drugs in modern healthcare system. Because of the low success rate and huge capital investment hinders the further application of phytomedicine in disease treatment. In recent time, an increase of interest in the herbal meidicine has been observed by pharmaceutical industry to search novel phytotherapeutics. In the search of new phytomedicine there are several challenges identified like-the reproducibility of pharmacological activity of herbal extracts, toxicity and adverse effects, adulteration and contamination, herb–drug interactions issues; poor scientific and regulatory standards. In this review, we illustrated a short overview on herbal medicine history, current clinical perspective, pharmaceutical and regulatory challenges as well as its clinical presence. Moreover, problems encountered in drug discovery from herbal resources and its possible solutions are described.