Global rising trends for natural products consumption, establishing traditional medicines, vast propagation, and simple access to legal or illegal natural medications have encountered health systems with a disastrous tsunami, which was not fully predicted and programmed for throughout medical education. </p

Abdolali Mohagheghzadeh

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Trends in Phramaceutical Sciences 2016: 2(3).
TIPS...................................
Natural Product Tsunami
Abdolali Mohagheghzadeh1,2,*
1Department of Phytopharmaceuticals (Traditional Pharmacy), School of Pharmacy, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, 
Shiraz, Iran.
2Office for Pharmaceutical Strategic Studies, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
Trends in Phramaceutical Sciences 2016: 2(3): 181-182.
.................................................................................................................................
 Global rising trends for natural products consumption, establishing traditional medicines, vast 
propagation, and simple access to legal or illegal natural medications have encountered health systems 
with a disastrous tsunami, which was not fully predicted and programmed for throughout medical edu-
cation. For instance, concomitant with establishing traditional system of Iranian medicine, around 700 
natural remedies, and thus far 2871 production licenses (natural products, traditional remedies, packages, 
extracts, and essential oils) are issued in Iran (1). Such a huge bulk of remedies is required for establish-
ing traditional medicines in countries like China, India, Iran, and the rest of the world. Pharmacy shops, 
supermarkets, malls, health shops (including traditional Attaries), and E-shops are the main sources for 
accessing such products. Thousands of illegal natural products are daily impounded from such places by 
the organizations in charge (2). If intact or semisynthetic natural compounds, such as atropine, taxol, di-
goxicin, vinca alkaloids, morphine, etc., are excluded, different legal or illegal types of natural and allied 
products that cause disasters may be classified as the followings:
 1) Phytotherapy products: These are mostly clinically approved as medications that originate from 
natural sources, like Ginkgo and Senna, in the form of a new dosage form. Such medications are made of 
single or multiple natural components, which are validated according to at least one active component.
 2) Traditional remedies: These are locally approved issues by local Food and Drug Administra-
tions (FDAs), like TCM or TIM remedies, which are derived from approved and well-known traditional 
texts without any negative reports at least during the past 30 years (3). Such products have been mostly 
presented up to now as their original dosage forms, such as Maajun, Sanoon, etc.
 3) Complementary natural sources and nutraceuticals: These are products that are mainly com-
posed of primary metabolites, including vitamins, salts, fatty acids, amino acids, enzymes, fibers, antioxi-
dants, and extracts from natural resources. Examples are oenothera oil and cod liver oil. 
 4) Crude drugs: These are medicinal plants or naturally originated raw materials that are tradition-
ally presented in local herbal shops or nowadays in packaged forms in pharmacies.
 5) Homeopathy products, whose clinical effects aren’t generally approved, are popular in countries 
that are bearing homeopathic physicians. 
 6) Adulteration or unauthorized natural products: Such illegal products bear at least an indication 
in the label that is not introduced in traditional medicines or modern phytotherapy. There are also reports 
on manually mixing up synthetic drugs with famous natural products with/without any notification on their 
label (4).
 Increasing world access to unauthorized and not fully controlled remedies-which are produced by 
underground companies- by means of satellite channels or on-line markets, would threaten humans’ health. .................................................................................................................................
Corresponding Author: Abdolali Mohagheghzadeh, Department of Phytopharmaceuticals (Traditional Pharmacy), School of Pharmacy, Shiraz 
University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
Email: Mohaghegh@sums.ac.ir
Recieved:04/07/2016; Accepted:31/07/2016
Opinion
Trends in Pharmaceutical Sciences 2016: 2(3):181-182.
Abdolali Mohagheghzadeh
References
1. http://www.fda.gov.ir
2. h t t p : / / w w w. t a s n i m n e w s . c o m / f a /
news/1394/01/04/
3. Arora D. Pharmacovigilance- An Industry 
Perspective. Pharmapublisher, 2012.
4. Elizabeth Williamson, Samuel Driver, 
Karen Baxter. Stockley’s Herbal Medicines In-
teractions: A Guide to the Interactions of Herbal 
Medicines. Second edition, London, UK: Pharma-
ceutical Press. 2013.
5. Calahan J, Howard D, Almalki AJ, Gupta 
MP, Calderón AI. Chemical adulterants in herb-
al medicinal products: A review. Planta Med. 
2016;82:505-15.
.................................................................................................................................
The question is: why do physicians and pharma-
cies have to become familiar with such natural 
products? In fact, prior to visiting a physician, at 
least a natural product may be tried by the patient. 
Therefore, in addition to accidental or well-known 
toxicities of illegal products, interactions between 
authorized products with conventional drugs and 
foods would occur (4). Therefore, prophylactic 
procedures and confronting strategies for such an 
uncontrolled tsunami should be discussed.
 1) Founding natural intoxication depart-
ments in special hospitals for the identification of 
unknown natural ingredients and consequently de-
toxification.
 2) Establishment of a natural product in-
formation center related to FDA in cities.
 3) Inclusion of different types of well-
known and locally available natural products and 
crude drugs information in the undergraduate phar-
macy and medical texts and training programs.
 4) Increasing funds for the research on 
mechanism of action, pharmacokinetics, interac-
tions, and management of important interactions, 
as well as studying the toxicity of the world de-
manded natural remedies
 5) Upgrading pharmacopoeias using up-
dated methods for the quality control of tradi-
tional remedies by indicating active components 
or markers for all products using, for instance, LC/
MS/MS.
 6) Upgrading real traditional health shops 
(Attaries) to modern forms and grading the qual-
ity of presented products. The critical point is to 
absolutely inhibit the presence of unknown and 
unauthorized natural products in the market.
 In conclusion, because of global increas-
ing trends for natural sources remedies consump-
tion, the medical system has encountered a tsuna-
mi of rising intake of known or unknown products 
that are not fully investigated by the patients. 
Among the above-mentioned solutions, the basic 
and urgent issue is to include information on le-
gal/illegal natural products in the undergraduate 
courses of medicine, potentiate pharmacy courses, 
and start special training programs, such as con-
tinuing educations for pharmacists and physicians. 
Consequently, the health systems should be ready 
for such disasters all the time. By the way, is it 
a right time for defining a world accepted label 
similar to radioactive labeling for notification and 
guaranteeing the presence and quality of natural 
products by international monitoring?
Keywords: Natural products, Adultration, Medical 
education.
182


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