Interactions Between Chinese Herbal Medicinal Products and Orthodox Drugs provides basic biomedical principles on adverse and beneficial interactions between Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) products (herbs and ready-made medications) and orthodox drugs. The book includes concise accounts of the trends of development and progress in Chinese medicine, pharmacological principles of CHM materials and mechanisms of interactions. Clinically relevant interactions are summarized in tables for easy reference with a catalogue of commonly used CHM products. A unique chapter with an action plan is assigned to promote research and documentation of herb-drug interactions. This textbook is desperately needed by undergraduates, postgraduates, medical practitioners, health professionals, medications regulatory bodies, and R&D professionals in pharmaceutical industries who are involved in CHM products.

Safety is a fundamental principle in the privision of herbal medicines and herbal products for health care and a critical component of quality control. These guidelines provide practical technical guidance for monitoring the safety of herbal medicines with pharmacovigilance systems.

Over the years a number of excellent books have classified and detailed drug drug interactions into their respective categories, e.g. interactions at plasma protein binding sites; those altering intestinal absorption or bioavailability; those involving hepatic metabolising enzymes; those involving competition or antagonism for receptor sites, and drug interactions modifying excretory mechanisms. Such books have presented extensive tables of interactions and their management. Although of considerable value to clinicians, such publica tions have not, however, been so expressive about the individual mechanisms that underlie these interactions. It is within this sphere of "mechanisms" that this present volume specialises. It deals with mechanisms of in vitro and in vivo, drug-drug, drug food and drug-herbals interactions and those that cause drugs to interfere with diagnostic laboratory tests. We believe that an explanation of the mechanisms of such interactions will enable practitioners to understand more fully the nature of the interactions and thus enable them to manage better their clinical outcome. If mechanisms of interactions are better understood, then it may be pos sible for the researcher to develop meaningful animal/biochemical/tissue cul ture or physicochemical models to which new molecules could be exposed during their development stages. The present position, which largely relies on patients experiencing adverse interactions before they can be established or documented, can hardly be regarded as satisfactory. This present volume is classified into two major parts; firstly, pharmacoki netic drug interactions and, secondly, pharmacodynamic drug interactions.

Modern medicine has reached a point where the patient is not treated as a biopsychosocial-spiritual being but rather is seen as a virtual identity consisting of laboratory findings and images. More focus is placed on relieving the symptoms instead of curing the disease. Mostly, patients are turned into lifetime medication-dependent individuals. New medicines are needed to overcome the side effects, complications, resistance, and intolerance caused by pharmacological and interventional therapies. In hopes of drug-free and painless alternative treatments with fewer complications, there has been a trend to revisit traditional methods that have been dismissed by modern medicine. Traditional medicine has to be reevaluated with modern scientific methods to complement and integrate with evidence-based modern medicine.

The global popularity of herbal supplements and the promise they hold in treating various disease states has caused an unprecedented interest in understanding the molecular basis of the biological activity of traditional remedies. Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects focuses on presenting current scientific evidence of biomolecular ef

Noting the need for clear and detailed information on Chinese herbal medicine, Jennes presents a volume (a reprint from 2004) for practitioners, students, pharmacologists, and researchers. He covers the potential for toxicity in general, types of interactions, and medicines that have been noted as harmful. The bulk of the book comprises 100 formula

Chinese Herbal Medicine -- part of a larger healing system called Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which also includes acupuncture, massage dietary advice and exercise. TCM is a popular method of treatment -- is actually called Chinese Drug Therapy in China because it uses a wide variety of substances and therapeutic modalities. Plant, animal and mineral substances are all included in the Materia Medica of Chinese Drug Therapy. The earliest uses date back at least 4000 years to the Shang dynasty. Characters representing medicinal substances have been found carved into oracular bone fragments. These were used diagnostically by the Wu Shaman of this time. The earliest materia Medica, the Sheng Nung Peng Tsao, recorded over 10,000 medicinal substances. While there seems to be an almost unlimited amount of medicinal substances, the most commonly used number around 200. Increased attention has begun being given to the field due to several factors: The apparent success stories in many cases; The failure of Western medicine in many disorders; and Realisation on the part of Western researchers that successful drugs can be designed on the basis of Chinese herbal drugs. This new book presents the latest research in the field.