Talk:Pharmacognosy/Archive 1

Archive 1

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In today's revision I deleted two paragraphs and felt that I should explain why I took this action. The pre-deletion second paragraph was an attempt to cover the history and scope of pharmacognosy (I think), but went wide of the mark. The external link here bears me out. The other deleted paragraph was so poorly worded that I'm not really sure what the author waa trying to say. Merenta 22:13, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I am substantially expanding the article, but there are a number of sections that require expansion and sourcing. I will get to them.Ksvaughan2 18:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Factual accuracy, Request for peer review

Active constituents: this section refers to the concept of "constituent synergy". It claims that "Plants with high levels of assumed active constituents like ginsenosides or hypericin may not correlate with the strength of the herbs." and suggests that a drug's effects are irreducible to their active ingredients. Such claims are in strong need of a reliable source (read: empirical study) or else this section will have to be changed to something like "Herbalists believe that phytopharmaceuticals rely upon constituent synergy."

From a previous revision, currently remains in some form with citation needed tag: "The US Food and Drug Administration "FDA" does not draw upon most foreign language publications or international assessments of drug safety in its determinations of drug safety. As a result one erroneously hears that herbal medicine is unstudied." For this to be accurate two things must be established: 1) That the FDA does not use relevant foreign language publications. 2) That these foreign language publications actually contain randomized, double blind, placebo controlled studies on herbs. I say randomized, double blind, placebo controlled because I believe that these are the sort of requirements that must be met to reach the standards of drug testing for FDA approval and thus the inferred meaning of the word "studied" in this sentence. If studies on all these herbs exist but they are not double blind, randomized and controlled it should be explicitly stated that these studies do not meach such requirements. As you can probably gather this will be very hard to verify in keeping with wikipedia's foreign lanugage policies so I think that these lines should just be removed outright.

The other problem is I actually don't think I would say that all herbs are unstudied. I've actually read several English language papers on the studies on herbs. For example NCCAM conducts many studies. They have also found a lot of negative results ie finding no significant drug effect. This also needs to be represented in the paragraph. The previous revision, especially implied that there have not been any studies on herbs that find negative results and that all the foreign language papers also showed that herbs work.

Indexing Issues and Megastudies Firstly I don't think "megastudies" is the best word (what is a megastudy and how does it differ from a normal study. Do they mean meta-analysis). Secondly it reads as more of a criticism of medline from one person's (Jonathan Treasure) than anything else. His opinion has been elevated far too highly as well; "He demonstrates". The POV nature of his article, which forms the basis of much of this section can be demonstrated through quotes such as "The legacy of political suppresion of herbal medicine in America..." and "A persistent strategy of the mainstream is to hold herbs and herbal medicine accountable to the tribunal of medical "science"". He provides an argument, not a study so his opinion must be presented as his opinion and given the POV nature of his opinion, must be balanced with those of oposing viewpoints.

In this article the ginseng fiasco is also presented as representative of all medline accounts of hrebal medicine, as if all evidence on medline should be discounted because of this one case. This is extremely misleading. Some meta-analyses will always be better than others and detailing one instance in detail casts doubt all all, including better, meta-analyses. My reading of this section and the introduction (and the Ethnopharmacology section) suggeted that there is systematic bias against all herbal medicines and that is the only reason that they have not been scientifically validated. The fact of the matter is that some herbal medicines just don't work (as evidence by double blind, placebo controlled trials on some medicines) and I'll be attempting to modify this article to represent this properly ut I would like some assistance in doing this. JamesStewart7 04:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Removal of misleading sections

This section: "The costs of testing drugs are sizable, and without the patent protection available to synthetic drugs, companies are reluctant to test herbal medicines ." has been removed as it is misleading. Large controlled trials have been done on several popular herbal remedies eg St John's Wort, http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/apr2002/nccam-09.htm. Now, it wasn't a drug company that did that study, it was the National Insitute of Health, however, the preceeding statement implies that large controlled trials have not been done on any promising herbal remedies. Looking at the history of asprin, where a derivative of salicylic acid, found in willow bark, was eventually patented, I'm not entirely sure any section of the statement is reliable. It is my opinion that this statement should not be reincluded unless extensive mention has been given to the large, controlled trials of herbal remedies that have been done. Furthermore, I do not think the addendum of "most herbal medicines have not undergone controlled trials due to patenent issues and costs" is sufficient either. Patent issues may hold back the trials of some medications eg lithium as a treatment for bipolar disorder (my understanding is there has been some trials but some larger ones are desirable) but there may be a lack of scientific support future trails of other medications. The article needs to differentiate between these cases, so not to erroneously imply that all herbal remedies are efficacious.

Ephedra The ephedra indicates that ephedra activates the sympathetic nervous system through its effects on adrenergic receptors. I really see no mechanism through which any of the components of ephedra would decrease the heart rate. Due to the absence of any evidence for this statement, all references to ephedra have been removed.

"Although the effect of a constitutde may be isolated it does not follow that its actions represent the whole herb." This is basically the topic sentnece of the section on constitutents. The whole section is hinting at this idea that herbs cannot be studied through reductive science. I am not going to make any suggestion as to whether this was the intention of the paragraph or not but it is definately my reading of it. While I accept the idea that drugs may have interactions, I think the implication that herbs cannot be studied through reductive science due to such interactions is unwarranted. The drug synergism wikipedia page gives the example of several known drug interactions, the effects of which have presumably been discovered through the use of data concerning observations in medical practice or through controlled studies. It is not difficult to envision a study in which an interaction may be tested for (just give the pateints two drugs and see what happens). Certain statistical tests eg ANOVA may even be used to explicitly test for interactions. As such, this section has been rewritten to reflect the fact that drug interactions may be scientifically tested.JamesStewart7 05:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

POV edits and POV tag

I have completed a series of edits relating to POV related changes to this article. I have added teh POV tag because I feel more changes are still necessary. I feel the article as a whole suggests that crude drugs do not necessarily need to be subjected to proper scientific analysis and is disparaging of science in general. For example, the issues section suggests really needs to acknowlege that many crude drugs do not have sufficient emprical support. The following is a list of changes that have been attended to. Please read this before amending any of my recent edits.

Terms like allopathy have no place in this article, as such they have been removed. Furthermore, poorly defined terms such as synergy (which has since been changed to drug synergism) and potentiation, which was used in a similar context as it is used in homeopathy must be adequately defined or removed.

"Although herbs and drugs have been combined for centuries in Asia and Europe, and worldwide most drugs are herbal, the disrupted relationship between traditional herbal medicine and pharmaceutical medicine in the United States has created a climate whereby herbs are considered dangerous to combine with pharmaceuticals and information developed in other countries is not readily available." This implies all herbs are safe and safe to combine with other medications. In fact the whole section this was taken from implies this. Ephedrine, for example, has some pretty strong contraindications against its use with drugs like SNRIs making this statement and the associated section somewhat misleading.

Indexing Issues Controlled Studies section (previously megastudies - changed because megastudies has no meaning) This section is highly POV. The title would suggest that the section would be about the efficacy of some popular crude drugs. Since Pharmacognosy has been defined as the scientific stuy of such drugs, this section should also make reference to the mechanism of action, the active constitutents and the treatments that have developed from these studies. Asprin is a famous case. This section should also be balanced with a brief overview of studies reporting that several crude drugs do not work. Instead, what is present is a criticism, from one person's POV about the nature of scientific analyses, indexing and misinformation. So why has an article on the scientific study of crude drugs devoted so much space to criticising science? Scientific errors must be noted of course but it is also necessary to note that these controlled studies are essentially the only reliable way to test the therepuetic effects of crude drugs.

Antioxidants and Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center The shot the article takes at this group is highly unfair. I managed to collect what I presume is the original Sloan Kettering page the article refers to: http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/69270.cfm. That article is about the ineffectiveness of this "Juice Plus" drink in preventing or treating cancer. The article is for the most part accurate. This is thier reference to antioxidants in cancer treatment "You are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy (High doses of antioxidants are not recommended during chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Because radiation therapy and certain chemotherapy drugs rely on the generation of free radicals to kill cancer cells, high doses of antioxidants might neutralize these free radicals and dampen the therapy's effect)." They did use the word might. It is clearly a speculative statement and they seem to be advising against the use of antioxidants due to what they presented as the unstudied potential for an effect, as per the precuationary principle.

It seems they were wrong about the danger of antioxidant treatment but one of the conclusions of the 2006 article "ANTIOXIDANTS AND OTHER NUTRIENTS DO NOT INTERFERE WITH CHEMOTHERAPY OR RADIATION THERAPY AND CAN INCREASE KILL AND INCREASE SURVIVAL" may be questioned on scientific grounds. All of the studies on antioxidants that that review mentions, except one are observational studies. The one controlled trial that they do references offers this conclusion "The small number of patients in the study precludes a definitive statement. The preliminary results, however, suggest efficient cardioprotection by this cheap and safe antioxidant combination, so that larger studies are warranted for confirmation." It appears to me that the suggestion that antioxidants are helpful and not just not harmful is premature. Article has been modified to reflect this.

Herbological references Herbological appears to be a POV who fails to reference a lot of their claims with empirical evidence. Any reference from the should be presented as opinion. In the event that this that an article from this cite does support its claims with scientific evidence it would be preferable to reference the original source instead.

"Treasures states that this occurs due to what he calls the "cascading effect" of Medline." This paragraph really needs to be balanced. The article suggests that this falso effect is amplified each time it is referred to. In the preceeding example, however, all that happened was a few people repeated the same falsehood that was derived from an improperly reported case study. To call this the "cascading effect of Medline" is to suggest this is a widespread occurance and that scientific studies finding a drug to be harmful cannot be trusted. So the problem is not that the case is mentioned in the article. It is that it is presented as representative of medical practice in general.

Seahorses The article implies that seahorses are medicinal, surrounding reference to seahorses by the term "medicinal species". Medicinal implies efficacy. Since there is no efficacy reference, the term "medicinal species" has been substituted for "plant or animal species which are used for medicinal purposes".

Education section This section continually asserts that pharmacognosy education is readed yet it concedes that there was a "closing of US pharmacognosy classes at the university level". If pharmacognosy is needed and we are really in a "post antibiotic age" (quote removed due to lack of verifiability) this raises the question as to why these classes were closed. One may speculate that this is because of a lack of differention from a standard pharmaceutical course or more likely, the fact that the scientific view on TCM is actually that many of the herbal treatments lack evidence for their efficacy and may be based on questionable logic, "Some doubts about the efficacy of many TCM treatments are based on their apparent basis in inductive reasoning — for example, that plants with heart-shaped leaves will help the heart, or that ground bones of the tiger can function as a stimulant because tigers are energetic animals." Traditional Chinese medicine. This would mean that these courses were closed due to a lack of scientific reason to believe that the majority of unstudied crude drugs are effective, which leaves little room for a univerisity science course. The article must be modified to reflect this, and of course references for the whole education section (particularly the pre 1950 bit) are needed. JamesStewart7 07:23, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

=University of Maryland Medical Center "Websites like that of the University of Maryland Medical Center, which purport to show information on herbal safety show cases that may lack the appropriate pharmacokinetics to produce the adverse results inferred." A quote like this which discredits an organisation is in dire need of a reference. Since appropriate support was lacking, the quote was removedJamesStewart7 08:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Fringe theory and loss of biodiversity section

I'm no expert in this area but a brief "Google" serach reveals that David Theodoropoulos' arguements are of questionable scientific status : http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/94/1/196. As this is not an article about Invasive species there is no reason to embark on such discussion. Give the status of David Theodoropoulos' the assertion that the truth lies somewhere in between is likely also unwarranted and has similarly been cut. Similarly the implication that the science surrounding invasive species has also been removed. JamesStewart7 07:52, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Removal of claims of clincial effectivness that are not based on scientific evidence

Case in point: rhinocerous horn... has been shown to have fever reducing properties. A Chinese Herbal Medicine reference is not sufficient to support this claim. It needs a reference from an empirical study. Also previous revision of this section is rather POV "less confrontational Chinese, who ear their medicine denigrated as unscientific often view conservationists as rude and arrogant". While the word "view" was used here this quote still gives a rather unflattering view of Westerners.JamesStewart7 07:52, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Herb and Drug Interactions

"Ginkgo biloba may have anti-platelet effects, although the results are not clear as it also contains flavanoids that improve blood function." The assertion that flavanoids imporve blood function is questionable and has such been removed and the anti-platlet effect is unsuported. As such this quote has been removed - see wikipedia page on Ginkgo biloba. I also modified the implication that the constitutents of garlic, peppermint and milk thistle may not have an effect in vivo due to synergy, ammending it to the more accurate "it is not clear whether these constitutents will have the same effect in vivo (humans)". The previous implication was based on a synergy concept, which seems to diverge from scientifical knowledge about drug interactions.JamesStewart7 08:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Merge with or cross-reference to articles on phytotherapy and herbalism

It has been suggested that this article be merged with that on phytotherapy. There is also an article on herbalism. If these articles are not merged, they should refer to one another and be clearly disambiguated. Thomas.Hedden (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:31, 12 March 2009 (UTC).

It seems to me that phytotherapy and herbalism are very closely related subjects. Perhaps they could be merged. Maybe herbalism has a broader definition. However, I do think pharmacognosy deserves its own article. As I understand it, pharmacognosy is the scientific study of plant constituents and their physiological properties. It is not a clinically oriented discipline like phytotherapy. Perhaps herbalism encompasses both; I don't know for sure. I am very new to Wiki and I don't yet know how the disambiguation process takes place. --Little Flower Eagle (talk) 23:33, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Marilyn Barrett (Ph.D. in pharmacognosy) has a definition of pharmacognosy here: http://pharmacognosy.com/about.htm She says it includes botany, chemistry and pharmacology As I said on the phytotherapy page, I vote for keeping pharmacognosy separate, and refining and organizing the content of the three articles, so the right information is in the right article. --Little Flower Eagle (talk) 23:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Pharmacognosy should definitely not be merged with either phytotherapy or herbalism. Pharmacognosy is a genuine science, with aspects of chemistry and pharmacology, and a major component of pharmaceutical development and research. Phytotherapy and herbalism are decidedly less scientifically rigorous. — Scientizzle 20:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Removal of sentence for improved readability:

I'm removing the first sentence, regarding Imhotep's supposed plant extractions from the Introduction section, as it is irrelevant and doesn't serve to introduce the topic, much less so preceding the etymology in the rest of the paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lumpy Berserk (talk • contribs) 03:41, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

The topic of this journal needs to be created.....

https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&ei=k5qEW6qeJIiGoASN07mICg&q=pharmacognosy+journal&oq=pharmacognosy+journal&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i67k1j0l9.217677.220101.0.221501.10.9.0.0.0.0.812.1476.5-1j1.2.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..9.1.811....0.xzkRMkkHyco — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.38.105.161 (talk) 00:49, 28 August 2018 (UTC)