Efficacy and Safety in Producing and Using Medicinal Plants and Herbal Drugs

Despite the tendency to use herbs and herbal medicine, less scientific documents have been published on the problems and necessities of using these types of drugs, especially on side effects, plant health and even drug interactions.

In this study, in order to review and critique the scientific documents related to the challenges of production and consumption of medicinal plants, review studies by examining sources by exploring scientific sources from Science Direct, Google Scholar, PubMed, Magiran and SID databases. The original Gigalib Digital Library was used to prepare the original reports. The terms "herbs", "adverse effects", "side effects", "drug-herbal interactions" and "complementary medicine" were used to search between 2000 and 2018. The fundamental questions of the study were whether the medicinal plants and herbal medicines offered have the necessary health and efficiency for public consumption? And will indiscriminate use of chemical drugs increase the effectiveness of drugs or not?

Results indicated the multiplicity of scientific reports related to the medicinal and therapeutic effects of medicinal plants. Factors such as advertising, culture and dislike of chemical drugs are involved in the tendency to use them. There were numerous reports of unhealthy production and fraud in medicinal plants and lack of expertise in prescribing and medication of medicinal plants and herbal medicines.

The use of herbal medicines is not without risk. Conscious use of herbs and attention to their possible side effects and drug interactions is recommended. Standardization of medicinal plant production processes is also necessary to ensure part of their efficiency and safety.