Herbal medicine

An astonishing renaissance of herbal medicine is currently being witnessed in the United States and elsewhere. This article discusses herbal medicine with the interests of the physician firmly in mind and is an attempt to highlight selected examples with the aim to emphasize general points. Data on the efficacy of herbal medicines from systematic reviews show beyond reasonable doubt that some herbal remedies are efficacious for certain conditions, while others report the lack of clinically relevant efficacy. Data on safety aspects suggest that some herbal medicines are largely free of serious risks, while others indicate serious risks which considerably limit their value for unsupervised use. Some herbal treatments can be shown to have a favorable risk-benefit profile, but for most the data are insufficient to determine whether they do more good than harm.