Herbal Drugs Essay

Introduction:

Herbal drugs are the medicine which contains medicinal plant parts or there substance likes extracts. As per the initial record the herbal drugs being used in India, China, Egypt, Greek, Roman from last 5000 years. The oldest and biggest Indian texts Rigveda, Atharvaveda, Charak Samhita and Sushruta Samhita include the uses of many herbal drugs (Khamboj et al ). In 3000 B.C. the Egyptian text Papyrus Ebers given the name after the German Egyptologist Georg Ebers contains 800 recipes and description of 700 medicinal plants like aloe, colocynth, Indian hemp, garlic, opium poppy, juniper, cumin, ricinus seeds and Arabic gum (Aksel Bernhoft et al 2008).

So from last many thousands years the medicinal plant being used by humans for different therapeutic purpose and are changed to modern medicine like many modern drugs originated from plant source. Many of the life saving drug are isolated/extract from medicinal plant examples include Vincristine (Vinca), digoxin (Digitalis), quinine (cinchona bark), Atropine (Datura), Artimicine (Artimisia annua), morphine (from the opium poppy) (Vickers and Zollman, 1999). As per WHO the uses of herbal drug was increased day by day to two- three time more as compared to conventional drug in different form like nutraceuticals, ayurvedic drugs, traditional chinse medicine, Functional food etc (Evans, 1994).

In the United States alone, 2011 sales of all herbal products were estimated to be $5.3 billion (Blu¬menthal et al. 2012). In reality, the herbal product industry is just another drug industry, one selling products that are poorly regulated and likely don’t work for their claimed indications (Steven Novella et al 2103). Various forest dwellers and metropolitan people also acquire ...

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...chemical constituents of the plants. In genetic markers identifications of medicinal plant the physical form does not restrict detection because the genetic markers can be isolated from fresh or dried organic tissue []. DNA-based techniques have been especially useful for authentication of those medicinal plant species, which are frequently substituted or adulterated with other species that are morphological and/or phytochemically indistinguishable [7-10]. A number of DNA-fingerprinting methods have been developed over past few years which include.

 RFLP (Restriction fragment length polymorphism)

 Micro satellite polymorphism

 SFP ( Single feature polymorphism)

 VNTR (Variable number tandem repeat

 AFLP (Amplified fragment length polymorphism)

 RAPD ( Random amplification of polymorphic DNA)

 SNP (Single nucleotide polymorphism)

 STR (Short tandem repeat)