Quality control of herbal medicine a must: expert

TEurope is leading the way in quality assurance and standardisation of herbal medicinal products, and while existing quality parameters for herbal medicines might seem well-defined, the sources for medicinal plants vary and quality standards at extraction facilities differ. Therefore, quality control at all stages of production, from cultivation and extraction to bottling and labeling, is necessary.

Herb Research is a German-based company that aims to provide quality assurance for herbal raw materials through strict monitoring of medicinal plants used in producing medicines, ensuring that the plant species used is the right one.

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The company also aims to work with local health authorities to comply with quality guidelines for herbal medicinal preparations sold on the local market.

"Herbal products are often sold with traditional names such as 'Ginseng', 'Cats claw' or 'Devil's claw', this can be misleading as the traditional names are rarely unique. The plant identified as Devil's claw in Germany, for example, is not a medicinal plant at all, while the Devil's claw used as treatment for degenerative rheumatic disorders is a South African plant 'Harpagophytum procumbens'," said Dr Mathias Schmidt, Managing Director of Herb Research, who was in Dubai to attend the first Middle East Natural Products Expo and conference.

"The quality of herbal medicine starts with the plant in the field, a fact which is mainly forgotten. You cannot produce quality retrospectively. The production of herbal medicines does not start with finished extracts - it starts with the collection, or better still, the cultivation of a plant. It goes even further to what plant to use and which medicinal part to collect at what period in the plant's lifecycle," Dr Schmidt said.

he quality of such natural products varies from one country to the other and from one manufacturer to the other. Even minute variations in plant species used to extract the medicinal product can make a difference and can produce undesirable side-effects or even no effect.