The document discusses the use of herbal medicine, highlighting its long history and significance in alternative medicine. It contrasts herbal medicine with conventional treatments, outlining advantages and disadvantages for both, while emphasizing the need for quality control and standardization in herbal products. Additionally, it mentions the growing interest from pharmaceutical companies in the commercialization of herbal medicines, alongside the importance of research and development in ensuring their efficacy and safety.

1. INTRODUCTION TO HERBAL FORMULATIONS
SUBJECT:- PHARMACOGNOSY
Prepared by :
Mr. Amit Chaudhari
Asst. Professor, MIP Dhanore
(M.PHARM)
MATOSHRI INSTITUTE OF PHARMACY, DHANORE (YEOLA) , A.Y. 2021-22 1

2. INTRODUCTION
Herbal Medicine has been used for thousands of years; in fact, its history goes back much further than
that of today’s pharmaceuticals. It is a major component of alternative medicine, and is useful in
preventing and treating a number of common ailments.
Nature’s pharmacy is extensive, filled with herbs that possess powerful medicinal properties with
guidance and knowledge ,everyone has the ability to use herbs to ease discomfort and promote
healing.
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3. HERBAL DRUGS
According to WHO the herbal drugs are defined as Finished , labelled medicinal products that contains
as active ingredients aerial or underground parts of plants or other plant material or combination
thereof whether in the crude state or as plant preparations.
 Advantages Of herbal Medicine
1. More Closely related to our body structure because we are composer of nature.
2. Do not alter hormone balance change chemical levels in the brain or tricks your body.
 Disadvantages of herbal Medicine
1. Would not be able to treat serious trauma such as broken legs
2. Would not able to heal appendicitis or a heart attack as effectively as conventional drugs would
use modern diagnostic test , surgery and drugs.
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4. CONVENTIONAL DRUGS
It means either (a) Pharmacological single entities which have been derived by chemical synthesis – the so
called new to nature drugs or (b) single chemical derivatives of naturally occurring pharmacologically
active substances detected in and isolated from members of plants, fungus, bacterial or animal world.
 Advantages of conventional medicine
1. Provides full attention to the patients as the doctor or therapist is able to fully dedicate himself or
herself to the patients and it helps in the healings process.
2. There exist many conditions that indispensably require conventional treatment
 Disadvantages of conventional medicine
1. Many side effects that seem to sometimes harm patients more than it helps them
2. May be hard to afford ,rising cost
3. These drugs are made in labs, rather than by nature , they are given a stamp of approval even when
their side effects may harm people
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5. EFFICACY OF HERBAL MEDICINE PRODUCTS
Herbal medicine usually contains a range of pharmacologically active compounds in some cases it is not
known which ingredients are important for the therapeutic effect. Many herbalists believe that isolated
ingredients have weaker clinical effects than whole plant extracts ,a notion that would obviously require
proof in each case.
Given these caveats clinical trials of herbal medicines are feasible much in the same way as for other drugs
.numerous randomized clinical trials of herbal medicines have been published and . Systematic reviews
/meta –analyses of these studies have become available
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6. VALIDATION OF HERBAL THERAPIES
Herbal medicines attracts the interest of both patients and scientists, in all aspects of drug developments
from natural products and also for validation of traditional medicine (TM).Several developing countries
rely on TM because of their accessibility and affordability and scientists all over the world consider
medicinal plants as a source of new chemical entities and use them to isolate compounds such as digoxin,
morphine, taxol, atropine and vinblastine.
Quality issues of medicines can be classified into two categories (external and internal)
1)External issues include toxic metals, Pesticides residues, microbes, adulteration and misidentification of
medicinal plants.
2) The internal issues affecting the quality of herbal medicines are complexity and non-uniformity of the
ingredients.
Through the use of modern analytical methods and pharmaceutical technique, previously unsolved internal
issues have become solvable. Proper methodologies for the research and development, manufacturing and
quality control of the formulation in TM and investigations of the therapeutic potentials of plants used in
those systems with support of scientific methods may help to use them with maximum possible efficacy.
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7. DEVELOPMENT OF HERBAL MEDICINE
The international trade in herbal medicine has attracted most of the pharmaceutical companies, including the
multinationals. Currently, several large multinational companies are interested in commercializing herbal
drugs. Integrated approaches in botanical research are shown in below figure.1
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8. Fig.2 Integrated approaches for development of Traditional medicine (Herbal medicine)
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9. ISSUES FOR QUALITY CONTROL AND QUALITY ASSURANCE OF HERBAL MEDICINE
QC and QA of herbal medicines are very important to protect the integrity of the herbal extracts / products
for the management of pharmaceutical quality . They have an important role for the reproducibility of the
effect of the active ingredients from batch to batch uniformity. To maintain and comply with the standard
conditions with respect to quality, safety and efficacy of herbal medicine it is required to follow some
important steps for standardization. This includes the following step:
1. Proper authentication and taxonomic assignment, such as through DNA fingerprinting and DNA bar
coding.
2. Structural elucidation of all isolated compounds of the medicinal plants.
3. Identification and characterization of the bioactive constituents for the pharmacological activity.
4. Standardization of the single extracts through spectroscopic analysis in the multicompound extracts.
5. International harmonization of specific standardization process under the umbrella of the International
Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA)
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