There is increasing use of natural products including medicinal plants, phytopharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, vitamins, and nutritional supplements for different health purposes worldwide. It is generally believed that these products are safe. However, there is growing evidence for safety concerns associated with these natural products. Nevertheless, little is known about the adverse events associated with these products.
Different types of researche including clinical safety studies and pharmacovigilance-based investigations can help us to have an evidence-based approach to the safety of these products. Information presented as associated adverse events of these products gathered from pharmacovigilance systems needs to be analyzed by scientific methods to determine the significance and potential causal relationship. The identification of adverse events associated with the use of natural products is challenging due to different reasons including impurities, batch-to-batch variability, misidentification and/or labeling, and different source of used production materials. There are also concerns about the suitable working of classic reporting systems in gathering reports on adverse events on unregulated medicines and supplements including so-called borderline products.
By collecting articles on this theme, we hope to gather more information about the safety of natural products to enhance their proper use in the general population. In this regard, we focus on clinical, and epidemiologic studies in this field. The studies discussing the limitations of reporting systems in gathering information of adverse events associated with natural products and the possible solutions are interested. Systematic reviews and meta-analysis providing an important summary of available information about the safety of natural products will be welcome. Furthermore, papers critically assessing the current evidence and discussing innovative solutions to today's challenges will be specially considered.
This Research Topic welcomes Original Research and Review articles focused on the safety of natural products including medicinal plants, phytopharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, vitamins, and nutritional supplements. Potential subtopics include but are not limited to the following:
o Clinical studies on the safety of natural products.
o The epidemiologic information on the safety of natural products.
o Studies analyzing the pharmacovigilance-based information available about natural products.
o Systematic reviews and meta-analysis on the safety of natural products.
o Reviews discussing the limitations of reporting systems in gathering information of adverse events associated with natural products and the possible solutions.
Note to the authors:Upon submission, authors will need to select the Journal they wish to submit to, and the studies need to adhere to the scope of the section as well as quality guidelines, if applicable. Please see below.
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Journal: Frontiers in Pharmacology, Section: Ethnopharmacology – Studies submitted must comply with the “Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology” (you can freely download the full version
here) and fit in the scope of the section (see
here).
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Journal: Frontiers in Nutrition, Section: Nutrition Methodology – Studies submitted must fit in the scope of the section (see
here).