Echinacea angustifolia herbal

Echinacea is a group of American coneflowers in the Family Asteraceae/ Compositae. There are nine species of the plant included in the genus. Three of these are typically seen in herbal preparations Echinacea purpurea, Echinacea angustifolia, and Echinacea pallida. Common preparations consist of freshly pressed or ethanolic extracts of the roots, leaves, and flowers as well as dried portions of the plants. E. purpurea is the most commonly used species, although it is often seen in combination with E. angustifolia (1). 

So does echinacea work One would think that this would be a relatively simple question to answer, but it isn t. The best reply I can come up with is that some echinacea preparations work for some conditions in some people some of the time. I realize that this is not very satisfying, but such is the nature of the herbal beast. First of all there are nine species of echinacea, although manufacturers only use three (E. purpurea, E. angustifolia, and E. pallida) to make supplements. Each of these plants has a different chemical profile. Each contains dozens of compounds some they have in common, some they don t. Furthermore, their leaves, flowers, stems, and roots have different compositions. An alcohol extract of the root will have a very different chemical makeup from a hexane extract of the stem or from capsules filled with dried, powdered leaves. Before we even... 

Echinacea, a genus including nine species that grow in the United States, is a member of the daisy (Asteraceae Compositae) family. Three of these species are commonly found in herbal preparations the dried rhizome and roots of E. angustifolia, the narrow-leaved echinacea pallida, the pale-flowered echinacea and A. purpurea, the cultivated variety. The latter is the species most commonly found in herbal preparations (Tyler, 1993). 

The purple coneflower (Genus Echinacea), indigenous only to North America, was widely used for many medicinal purposes by the American Indians of the Great Plains and subsequently adopted by white settlers. An extract of . angustifolia (narrow-leaved purple coneflower) was made available to medical practitioners by Lloyd Brothers Pharmacists Inc., at the end of the nineteenth century, and became widely used in the USA by eclectic physicians for infectious and inflammatory diseases [5]. With the introduction by the FDA of stricter requirements for testing of drugs, the use of Echinacea declined in the 1930 s, but its use in self-medication has seen a renaissance in recent years. Since 1994, herbal remedies have been defined as dietary supplements in the USA which has allowed manufacturers to make general claims about their efficacy. 

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