Diabetes mellitus and its management with medicinal plants: A perspective based on Iranian research

An Encyclopedia of Herb-Disease, a Quick Shortcut for Herbal Research: A Comprehension Based on Iranian Herbal Studies

“…As well as, due to the widespread and popular use of herbal medicines, medical staffs should be familiar with traditionally used herbs, including endemic ones. Accordingly, it is expected that herbal researchers prioritize ethnopharmacological research on medicinal herbs, especially endemic ones which are traditionally used in their own country [7]. However, considering the time and expenditure that are spent to such studies, it is crucial to find reasons and motivations of designing such herbal research.…”

“…Information on the history of traditional uses of herbs or traditional management of known health problems can be included as well. As mentioned earlier, due to the vast amount of information available for herbs and diseases, it is worth to emphasize that a comprehensive database in which the valid and assessed results of herbal research on various aspects of diseases are updated in detail is an ideal tool to increase the efficiency of research and to shorten the way of the herbal management and control of diseases [7]. The authors are currently working on the schema of an ideal herbal database, which will be published in future.…”

“…In our pervious review, the efficacy of medicinal herbs on the management of different aspects of diabetes mellitus (DM), including parameters in DM, pharmacological mechanisms, and the effects on the functions of organs were collected and compared (Table 4) [7] here, we showed that some important aspects of DM other than the blood glucose and HbA1C levels were not considered in both Iranian and non-Iranian herbal research. We think that providing and improving such a standard framework for diseases and health problems help herbal researchers to design their studies according to unexamined items which are also appropriate to Furthermore, as others and we have raised [7] journals need to define unanimous guidelines with emphasis on criteria such as botanical scientific nomenclature, the quality and safety of herbs, phytochemical, pharmacological and toxicological information to improve the validity and quality of the final publications.…”

“…However, sometimes they are not informed that herbal therapy, especially over a proven conventional therapy, may be toxic and dangerous [4]. In order to decrease this kind of risks, clinicians and pharmacists need to be informed about herbs and other CAM practices [5,6], especially with their own country endemic, traditional herbs [7].…”

“…Medicinal herbs and related herbal products are important targets of patent claims since they have become of great interest to the international drug and cosmetic industry [1]. However, there are many problems associated with botanicals research, for instance limited data exist on the safety and efficacy of botanical products [7,9]. Therefore, reducing the time of research, economizing investments with better safety and conducting high-quality botanicals research are essential and indispensable.…”