Dear Sir. Concerning your issue about the guideline on polyherbal formulation by WHO. Herbal drugs are being used as medicines from ancient period. The increased use of herbal drugs, and concerns over their safety and efficacy have certainly augmented the need of standardization of these herbal drugs. WHO has set up guidelines for standardization of these drugs, which are used as a standard by the majority of countries. The standardization includes the external (macroscopy/microscopy) as well as internal examination/ash values, extractive values and many other parameters to identify, authentify and study its chemical composition. Standardization of the medicinal plants will ensure indirectly that the plants are conserved for their medicinal and nutritive value. Standardization confirms the safety of the medicinal plant but efficacy has to be judged clinically or in the laboratory. There is a thin line between efficacy and the presence of chemical compounds in the drug. The major hurdle in standardization of the batch to batch variation in the plant compounds. Addition of finer analytical methods of the chemical compounds may help to minimize the variation and give a better resolution of the plant drug. Importance of toxicological examination has increased manifolds as contamination can occurs at various stages, from collection, storage, analysis or processing to extraction of active principles. These parameters should be recorded for years together; their database should be generated, recorded and analyzed statistically to see the difference in quality and quantity of the chemical compounds.To see WHO guideline, visit the following below link :

http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/documents/s14878e/s14878e.pdf

Thanks

I think no guidelines has been issued by who on polyherbal formulations. There might be some guidelines in Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia

Hi Vijay,

Yes, there are WHO guidelines for polyherbal formulations. Please see the link: http://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/41986

I've also included a PDF copy for ease of reference. Hope this helps, best wishes with your research project!

Best regards,

Hamed Bazaz

Founder, Managing Director

journaledit.com

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