Investigation of the status of medicinal plants sellers and introduction of widely used medicinal plants in herbal medicine stores in Gorgan

Background and Purpose:

Considering the importance of medicinal plants and herbal medicine stores as the main factors in the market of medicinal plants could be a good direction for planners and policy makers of the pharmaceutical industry in the Golestan province, as one of the most important habitats of such plants in the country. Therefore, in this research, the most common purchased medicinal plants in Persian medicine were studied in Gorgan.
 
Methods and Materials:

This research included 43 herbal medicine stores in Gorgan. The required information was collected using a questionnaire including demographic characteristics of the sellers, howness of the information collection, the characteristics of the most important and best-selling plants as well as the socioeconomic status of buyers. The content validity of the questionnaire was determined by experts and some experienced sellers and the reliability was calculated by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Finally, the collected data was analyzed by SPSS software.
 

The study population consisted of 43 herbal medicine sellers. The average age of herbal medicine sellers was 35.09 years and their average working experience was 7.6 years. Only 9.3% of participants possessed related fields of study and 90.6% had studied other fields. Among the best-selling plants, Thyme (22%), Borage (20%) and Flixweed (20%) could be mentioned. The most common reasons for referring to herbal medicine stores in Gorgan were disease related to the liver and kidneys, joint pain and colds.
 

Various consumptions are being used to treat the diseases with medicinal plants in Gorgan. Regarding the high consumption of some plants among low-income people and the acquisition of information through experience and self-study, planning and policy making for the cultivation of medicinal plants and providing training courses for the sellers are recommended.