Pharmacokinetic interactions of herbal medicines for the treatment of chronic hepatitis

Tun Pin Hsueh, Wan Ling Lin, Tung Hu Tsai*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

Chronic liver disease is a serious global health problem, and an increasing number of patients are seeking alternative medicines or complementary treatment. Herbal medicines account for 16.8% of patients with chronic liver disease who use complementary and alternative therapies. A survey of the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan reported that Long-Dan-Xie-Gan-Tang, Jia-Wei-Xia-Yao-San, and Xiao-Chai-Hu-Tang (Sho-saiko-to) were the most frequent formula prescriptions for chronic hepatitis used by traditional Chinese medicine physicians. Bioanalytical methods of herbal medicines for the treatment of chronic hepatitis were developed to investigate pharmacokinetics properties, but multicomponent herbal formulas have been seldom discussed. The pharmacokinetics of herbal formulas is closely related to efficacy, efficiency, and patient safety of traditional herbal medicines. Potential herbal formula–drug interactions are another essential issue during herbal formula administration in chronic hepatitis patients. In a survey with the PubMed database, this review article evaluates the existing evidence-based data associated with the documented pharmacokinetics profiles and potential herbal–drug interactions of herbal formulas for the treatment of chronic hepatitis. In addition, the existing pharmacokinetic profiles were further linked with clinical practice to provide insight for the safety and specific use of traditional herbal medicines.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)209-218
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Food and Drug Analysis
Volume25
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2017

Keywords

  • chronic hepatitis
  • herbal medicine
  • lamivudine
  • National Health Insurance Research Database
  • pharmacokinetics

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