Detection of drug-drug interactions is essential during the early stages of drug discovery and development, and the understanding of drug-botanical interactions is important for the safe use of botanical dietary supplements. Among the different forms of drug interactions that are known, inhibition of cytochrome P450 (P450) enzymes is the most common cause of drug-drug or drug-botanical interact...

Bupleurum & Peony Formula (Jia Wei Xiao Yao San) is a herbal formula which possesses a clinical history for the treatment of menopausal syndrome and menstrual irregularity. The present investigation reports the ability to monitor the formula's phytoestrogen content that will allow for the implementation of a standardization protocol that is based on a quantifiable biological response. Utilizing...

This review presents methods for the assessment of acute and chronic risk from pesticide residues in food. Multiple pesticide residues can often be found in food. Currently, there is no internationally accepted procedure for the assessment of cumulative exposure to multiple pesticide residues in food. Therefore, risk assessment is based on toxicological evaluation of single compounds in a food ...

Electrochemical immunosensors have emerged as a highly sensitive and rapid technique for chemical contaminants detection in environmental monitoring, food safety and quality control. This review concentrates on recent advances made in detection and quantification of chemical contaminants such as pesticides and antibiotics residues with electrochemical immunosensors. In this paper, the preparati...

Data generated in the UK have indicated that pesticide residue levels can be highly variable between the individual fruit or vegetables from the same crop or lot in trade. Statistical experiments with these data showed that residues in composite samples, taken according to Codex recommendations, are unlikely to differ by more than a factor of 3-4 from the mean level in the lot. This was corrobo...

Drugs used to treat anxiety have many negative side effects including addiction, depression, suicide, seizures, sexual dysfunction, headaches and more. Anxiolytic medications do not restore normal levels of neurotransmitters but instead manipulate the brain chemistry. For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) prevent the reuptake of serotonin from the synapse allowing seroton...

This study develops a method for the discrimination and prediction of honey samples from various botanical origins. The method was based on the nontargeted volatile profiles obtained by solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (SPME-GC/MS) combined with chemometrics. The blind analysis of nontargeted volatile profiles was carried out by SPME-GC/MS for 87 authentic ho...

Within the group of botanical products there is a large range of variation with regard to their properties. Some products are identical to foods while others come close to or are medicines. Botanical products are regulated differently within the different member states of the European Union (EU) and globally. They are regulated either as food or as medicinal products, and in the latter case oft...