it has been observed that publication of an outcome of a natural herbomineral product in a clinical study contains mechanism of action in terms of chemistry of individual constituents of the product. it is hypothesized that a natural compound may have active constituent and a corrective in balance proportion in the natural product. so, the effectiveness should have been decided on the natural product as a whole.
You raised a good question. The whole is important if you are using the natural product as food. The whole is also important if you are using the crude extract or the whole as medicine. When we come to address the quality/safety/efficacy issues however, often one of a handful of constituents attribute to the desired biological activity. Just like modern medicines, the detection and quantification of the active ingredients in the whole product can give you an attribute of the quality of the products as medicines. If you isolate the active ingredients and the compounds do produce a better activity ( which is often the case) than the whole, then you have the drugs, or what we call, the modern medicine. This is not to say the crude or traditional medicines do not work but you apply modern chemistry and pharmacology associated with the natural product components to define quality/safety/efficacy. If the crude extract shows better effect than the active products, which we have seen in some cases, the concept of synergism/additive effects apply and hence determining the whole components may be relevant
You raised a good question. The whole is important if you are using the natural product as food. The whole is also important if you are using the crude extract or the whole as medicine. When we come to address the quality/safety/efficacy issues however, often one of a handful of constituents attribute to the desired biological activity. Just like modern medicines, the detection and quantification of the active ingredients in the whole product can give you an attribute of the quality of the products as medicines. If you isolate the active ingredients and the compounds do produce a better activity ( which is often the case) than the whole, then you have the drugs, or what we call, the modern medicine. This is not to say the crude or traditional medicines do not work but you apply modern chemistry and pharmacology associated with the natural product components to define quality/safety/efficacy. If the crude extract shows better effect than the active products, which we have seen in some cases, the concept of synergism/additive effects apply and hence determining the whole components may be relevant
The reason is likely practical- we aren't sure which compounds work synergistically together, out of the many compounds in the original natural product. It is relatively easy to purify a compound using assay-directed fractionation. It is less easy to find the synergistic compounds if they aren't directly active in the same assay, but affects the binding constant of the major active compound to whatever peptide is being used in the assay.
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