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The concentration of essential metals such as Fe, Cu, Mg, Co and Zn and toxic metals such as Pb, Cd, Cr, As and Ni were determined in a number of animal meats, organ meats, meat products, and eggs by using UV-visible and atomic absorption spectrophotometry ( The concentration of arsenic in all samples was found negligible and this indicates that the investigated samples are safe from arsenic toxicity. The concentrations of other four toxic metals being very negligible in most of the samples indicate that these foodstuffs are reasonably safe from metal toxicity. However a few samples which exhibited higher concentrations of these metals above their tolerance limits are alarming for the public health and demand regular examination of these items before coming to the markets. The information obtained from the present investigation is expected to be useful to the general people of this region in selecting meats as their diets.

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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.

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