Hsueh-Yi Pan, Department of Pharmacy, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Li-Wei Wu, School of Pharmacy, National Defense Medical Cente, Taiwan
Pin-Chun Wang, School of Pharmacy, National Defense Medical Center, Taiwan
Ping-Hung Chiu, School of Pharmacy, National Defense Medical Center, Taiwan
Meng-Ting Wang, Department of Pharmacy, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, TaiwanFollow

Herbal medicine (HM) is a type of medicine that uses active ingredients made from plants to treat diseases and maintain health and wellbeing. Due to its increasing worldwide usage, the possibility of HMs and conventional drugs being concurrently used is high, potentially leading to adverse events resulting from herb-drug interactions. Despite the safety concerns regarding such interactions, few studies have been conducted for assessing clinical consequences of using HMs with conventional drugs in real-world settings. As clinical trials are not forthcoming rapidly enough to provide the evidence for herb-drug interactions, observational studies are considered as an alternative approach. The present review focuses on evaluating the utility of analyzing real-world data in observational research to study the clinical consequences of herb-drug interactions between HMs and conventional drugs. The data sources and study designs of each highlighted literature are examined based on its strengths and limitations in analyzing herb-drug interactions. Finally, future observational studies involving novel and rigorous methodologies that may be effective in studying herb-drug interactions are discussed.

Pan, Hsueh-Yi; Wu, Li-Wei; Wang, Pin-Chun; Chiu, Ping-Hung; and Wang, Meng-Ting (2022) "Real-world evidence of the herb-drug interactions," Journal of Food and Drug Analysis: Vol. 30 : Iss. 3 , Article 1.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.38212/2224-6614.3428

if doi>