Herbal medicines have been widely used all over the world since ancient times and have been recognized by physicians and patients for their better therapeutic value as they have fewer adverse effects as compared with modern medicines. However, phytotherapeutics needs a scientific approach to deliver the components in a sustained manner to increase patient compliance and avoid repeated administration. This can be achieved by designing novel drug delivery systems for herbal constituents. Novel drug delivery systems not only reduce the repeated administration to overcome non-compliance, but also help to increase the therapeutic value by reducing toxicity and increasing the bioavailability, and so on. Recently, pharmaceutical scientists have shifted their focus to designing a drug delivery system for herbal medicines using a scientific approach. For a long time herbal medicines were not considered for development as novel formulations owing to lack of scientific justification and processing difficulties, such as standardization, extraction and identification of individual drug components in complex polyherbal systems. However, modern phytopharmaceutical research solves the scientific needs for herbal medicines as in modern medicine, which gives way for developing novel formulations such as nanoparticles, microemulsions, matrix systems, solid dispersions, liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, and so on. This article summarizes various drug delivery technologies for herbal actives, which are gaining more attention for better therapeutic response.

The activity of herbal medicines depends on overall function of a variety of active components, as all the constituents provide synergistic action and thus enhance the therapeutic value. The nature serves us with the exact proportion of all the constituents for various ailments in a single species. Each active constituent plays an important role and they are all related to each other. However most of the herbal origin drugs possess insoluble character leading to lower bioavailability and increased systemic clearance requiring repeated administration or higher dose, which makes the drug as a poor candidate for therapeutic use. To conquer these obstacles, related research in the field of herbal medicines has not yet been profoundly investigated. In phyto-formulation research, developing nano dosage forms (Polymeric Nanoparticles (Nanospheres & Nanocapsules), Liposomes, Proliposomes, Solid Lipid Nanoparticles, and Nanoemulsion etc.) has large number of advantages for herbal drugs, including enhancement of solubility and bioavailability, protection from toxicity, enhancement of pharmacological activity, enhancement of stability, improving tissue macrophages distribution, sustained delivery, protection from physical and chemical degradation etc. Thus the nano sized drug delivery systems of herbal drugs have a potential future for enhancing the activity and overcoming problems associated with plant medicines.

No abstract

No abstract

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract