China herbal products

Finally, herbal products imported from China may be contaminated with pesticides or with heavy metals added during the manufacturing process. Contaminated Chinese herbals have led to cases of arsenic, lead, mercury, thallium, and cadmium poisoning. Similarly, investigations of traditional Indian Ayurvedic remedies have shown them to sometimes contain dangerous levels of lead, zinc, mercury, arsenic, aluminum, and tin. 

Herbal medicines, plant-derived materials, or products with therapeutic or other human health benefits that contain either raw or processed ingredients from one or more plants (1) have been utilized to treat various diseases for thousands of years, especially in Far Eastern countries. It is estimated that traditional herbal preparations account for 30%-50% of the total medicinal consumption in China (2). However, The quantity and quality of the safety and efficacy data on traditional medicine are far from sufficient to meet the criteria needed to support its use worldwide. The reasons for the lack of research data are due not only to health-care policies, but also to a lack of adequate or... 

Medicinal and herbal extracts form the basis for the health care of approximately 80% of the world s population some 21,000 plant species are used world-wide. Screening of natural products led to the discovery of the immunosuppressants, cyclosporin, rapamycin, and FK 506 (153), and there is a continued search for new compounds, even in relatively well-explored areas such as China (154). 

Panax japonicus var. major is a wild dicotyledonous herb of Araliaceae which is maiidy distributed in southwest China and Himalayas areas . Its root has been used as an expectorant, antitussive and hemostatic in Chinese herbal medicine for a long time. And the main active constituents were thought as a wide range of saponins and sapogenins . Biotechnological alternative, i.e. cullus cultures, cell suspension cultures and hairy root cultures, has been adopted for in vitro saponin production. But, no study has been made for the tissue culture and secondary metabolism of this plant. This paper describes the hairy root culture and its saponin formation. 

The practice of traditional medicine is widespread in Asian societies such as India, China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Bangladesh. Some 70 to 85 % of the population is dependent on traditional medicine in these countries. In Japan, preparations made from herbal dmgs (i.e., the kampo system of medicine) are more in demand than mainstream pharmaceutical products. Similarly, the traditional system of medicine is very popular on the African continent, which is very rich in medicinal herbs. Even in European countries, 1500 plant species of aromatic and medicinal plants are presently being used in countries such as Albania, Croatia, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and United Kingdom. 

Zhou LG, Wu JY. Development and application of medicinal plant tissue cultures for production of drugs and herbal medicinal in China. Nat Prod Rep 2006 23(2) 789-810. 

Chang, X.-R., Q.-H. Xu, D.-Y. Zhu, G.-Q. Song, and R.-S. Xu Constituents of Licorice. 1. Antimicrobial Active Compound, Structure of Licobenzofuran (Abstract of 1st Japan-China Congress of Chemistry of Natural Products, Nagoya (Japan), 1981. Zhongcaoyao (Chin. Herbal Med.), 12,530 (1981) Chem. Abstr., 97, 20701k (1982). 

---