Production and Manufacturing of Herbal Medicines - Essay Example

Medicinal Plants Name Institution Medicinal Plants Introduction Natural products provide several opportunities. For example, extracts from plant either in pure compound or in standardized form offer several opportunities for discovering new drugs due to the availability of unmatched chemical diversity. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a greater proportion of the world’s population depends on the traditional medicines for the satisfaction of their primary health needs. Herbal medicine application represents the long history of the human interaction with the environment. Most plants used for medicinal purposes contain a wide array of substances that could be utilized for treating chronic and infectious diseases. People turned to ethnopharmacognosy due to the continuous development of the adverse effects and microbial resistance to the chemically synthesized drugs. Research by the WHO indicates that there are literally thousands of phytochemicals within the plants, which are safe and highly effective as alternative medicines with less adverse effects. The premier steps involved in the utilization of the biologically active compounds from the plants include extraction, pharmacological screening, isolation, and characterizing the bioactive compounds. There is likewise need for toxicological and clinical evaluation. Plants are rich in various compounds majorly the secondary metabolites like the aromatic substances. Most of the aromatic substances are the phenols or the associated oxygen-substituted derivates like tannins. There are several herbal products within the market asserted to treat symptoms of wide range of problems. WHO considers herbal drugs as complete, labeled medicines with different constituents, and capacity to treat some diseases that conventional medicines have not been able to handle. Preparation of liquid herbs is easy considering the limited processes involved. The commonly used preparation methods include tinctures and extracts. Production and Manufacturing of Herbal Medicines Extraction is the most significant step while analyzing the since it is necessary to extract the required chemical materials for further separation and characterization. There is need for proper actions to ensure reduced loss of potentially active materials or prevent distortion or destruction during the preparation from the extracts (Agrawal, 2009, 152). For the liquid herbs, the selection of the solvent systems majorly depends on the specific nature of the bioactive compound in question. For example, while extracting the components that are more lipophilic in nature, there is need to utilize the dichloromethane or methanol in the ration of 1:1. To some extent, to remove the chlorophyll content, the extraction method might utilize hexane. The target compound could range from non-polar to polar making them thermally labile, which makes selection of the suitable method important factor for consideration. The herbal extracts are liquid solutions of the medicinal herbs as fresh or the dried herbs mixed with the alcohol and free from any solid matters. Such extraction procedures leave only the herbal oils mixed with alcohol. The extracts could be sold as an alternative medicine and dietary supplement commonly added to the flavor during the baking procedure (Pardo, Pieroni, & Puri, 2010, 216). Scientifically, the extracts are tinctures. There are different types of herbal extracts including the liquid herbal extracts, single herbal extracts, combination herbal extracts, and glycerites. In the single herbal extracts, the medicinal herbs are made through gathering the plants used in making the certified line of the organic products. The herbs used in such cases come from certified organic firms and invested in the peak seasons when the plants have extracts of high quality and fresh (products (World Health Organization, 2003, 17). The rise in the single herbal extraction reflects increased development within the herbal supplement as the method uses certified organic alcohol from the grapes used in extracting the medical properties of the plant and other important constituents. With regard to the combination herbal extracts, most studies indicate the method that produces medicinal herbs of the highest quality within the market inches. Combination herbal extraction method does not require corn or grains during the extraction of the important plant constituents especially the problems associated with gluten and allergen sensitivities (Bhattacharyya, 2012, 105). The method of extraction involves using organic ingredients, which makes the extracts not only healthy but also tasty. The glycerites extracts are liquid in nature and involves extraction from the glycerin. The method utilizes vegetable glycerin as the main menstruum rather than the alcohol. Since the glycerin are nectar-like, sweet in nature, the method of extraction is suitable for extracting medicinal plants meant for consumption by the pets and children. The liquid extracts from the glycerin are suitable for people with intolerance to alcohol and those concerned with the health status of their liver. The demerit associated with the method is the shorter shelf life of the medicinal extracts that only last for either one or two years which makes the methods using alcohol as the major solvent efficient as they last for several years (Bhattacharyya, 2012, 109). The final product from the extraction in glycerin is thick, sweet, and syrupy in nature. The extracts have flavored with the fleshly extracted juice making them of high quality oil and natural fruits concentrate. Liquid herbal extraction involves crafting the extracts through batching water with the materials from the plant. The major advantage associated with the method is the ability to preserve the product over a long duration and safeguard the constituents within the product (Badawi, 2012, 185). Medicinal herbs produced in this method can as well be conveniently and easily added to the water, juice, and tea to allow easy consumption. There is processing of herbal extracts from quality dried and fresh materials of plants extracted using authorized grape alcohol and organic grain. The process used for manufacturing the extracts involves care detailing of the medicinal plant, unsurpassable integrity, and exclusive extraction method. Liquid herbs allow for optimal absorption, effect the changes within the body much faster compared to other methods of taking the herbs, have long-shelf life, more concentrated, convenient, and easy to take. While preparing the liquid herbs, there are three basic menstruums commonly used in extracting chemical compounds from the herbs within the tinctures, alcohol, glycerin, and vinegar. The commonly used solvent is the alcohol since it has the ability of extracting the fats, resins, waxes, alkaloids, and to some extent the volatile oils. Utilizing 80% to 100% proof alcohols like brandy and gin provides the required alcohol-water ratio without the need to add any ingredient. When using pure grain alcohol, there is need to add water. During preparation, it is recommended by the WHO to avoid using the tap water as it contains chlorine. The most important thing is to cover the herbs completely to allow swelling as they absorb the liquid used in the extraction process. In China, while preparing the liquid herbs, they macerate for a longer duration. Stronger tinctures often require storage for approximately 4 to 6 weeks with the durations depending on the mixture required and the nature of the plant. Similar to the preparation method for the herbal tinctures, the liniments also follow similar procedure but meant for external utilization since they mostly use inedible solvents. Currently, alcohol is displacing vinegar as a menstruum due preparation of the liquid herbal extracts since it is more efficient in the extraction and preservation of the medicinal values and features of the herbs. Vinegar, on the other hand, is a passable solvent and significant when avoiding the alcohol. When using alcohol and vinegar in conjunction, the vinegars could assist in the extraction of the alkaloid materials from the herbs. The extracts that contain the menstruum, alcohol and vinegar, is an acetous tincture. Preservation of the full range of the medicinal properties depends on usage of the plant material. Extracts originating from the fresh herbs usually utilize equal parts of the plant to the solvent making the ratio 1:1. The herbs vary in composition and properties, which makes the quality control measures, procedures, and techniques substantially different from the other conventional pharmaceutical products (Bourgou, 2012, 162). Due to the inherent complexity in the nature of the grown and naturally occurring medicinal herbs, there are some categorized as toxic plants due to the small quantity of the active ingredients. As a result, the production and primary processing method often influence the quality of the herbal medicine. For such reason, it is critical to apply the good manufacturing practices (GMP) while manufacturing herbal medicines for safety and quality reasons. With the increment in consumption of the medicinal herbs on the global market, safety and quality are becoming significant issues of the finished products after manufacturing (World Health Organization, 2011, 82). Moreover, such issues are becoming the concern for health institutions, public, and the general pharmaceutical industry. Quality of the herbs determines the safety and efficacy of the herbs. Commerce of Herbal Medicines According to the statistics from the WHO, 80% of people globally depend on the consumption of the herbal medicines for their primary healthcare. The organization cites that there is need for concern over safety and efficacy of the herbal consumption even as the industry continues to grow. Even as the herbal medicine can potentially enable the advancement of the healthcare, there have been several challenges worth overcoming prior to the successful integration of the herbal medicines into the mainstream medicine. The major barrier influencing the advancement of the herbal industry is inadequate translation and interpretation of the traditional information with reference to the herbal texts and research by the scientists (Bourgou, 2012, 160). Indeed, incorporation of the safe and efficacy into the medical system is becoming a reality as more researchers are focusing on the development of the efficient methods of ensuring proper extraction of the medicinal plants. There have been accumulations of both the modern medicine and herbal compendium since the ancient times. Establishment of the credibility in the medicinal herbs within the modern environments depends on the experience-based claims from the herbal practitioners and transformation into the evidence-based claims. The current herbal economy also needs to address the requirement for both individualizing based on the TCM and standardization on the basis on the modern pharmacology treatment. Upon resolution of these issues, there would be widespread application of the herbal medicines with regard to safety, effectiveness, and affordable form of the healthcare services. The contributions of the herbal medicines in mainstreaming the medical industry are quite extensive and almost impossible to quantify truly. Due to the ever-rising scrutiny within the healthcare cost and recent public focus on the regulating factors, the economic benefits of the extracting the medicinal features are most likely to be the determinant factor in acceptance and implementation of various policies into the mainstream medicine. Medicinal plants are botanical raw materials majorly used within the therapeutic, aromatic, and for the culinary reasons such as the cosmetics, medicinal products, natural health products, and health foods. The herbal medicines are well the starting materials for the value-added manufactured natural ingredients including the essential oils, dry and liquid medicinal extracts, and oleoresins. Currently, it is clear that the global industrial demand for the medicinal herbs due to the increased production of the herbal health care formulations, nutritional supplements of the herbal ingredients, and the rising level of herbal-based cosmetics (Sasidharan, Chen, Saravanan, & Latha, 2011, 9). The traditional practitioners of the herbal-based medicines, healers, and increased consumption at the household level also contribute to the demand for the herbal medicinal products. The medicinal herbs are increasingly on the rise with major prescriptions bought over-the-counter (OTC). Generally, the global demand for the botanical and drugs derived from the plants increased from $19.5 billion to $32.9 billion between 2008 and 2013 respectively with an annual growth rate of 11% according to the study carried out by the WHO. The growth potential and economic prospects associated with the herbal market might be due to seriousness of the state through launching of various schemes aimed at developing the alternative medicines under the ministry of health. The other countries in Asia that registered improvement in the industry are Indonesia and Malaysia that registered $970 million and $44o million in 2009 and 2008 respectively. European countries are the major importers of herbal products with German leading by 30% of the market share followed by France (Ankad, Konakeri, Hegde, & Roy, 2015, 448). US posted a 1% growth, which might reflect the recession in its economy. Despite the slowdown, its market stands at $4.8 billion. In America, the herbal medicines are sold under the law that regulates the food supplements not the medicines. Globally, there is growth in demand for herbal medicines especially in the developed countries. Consequently, the conventional treatment methods are ineffective in several diseases, which leave the room for the herbal medicines to score the points. Factors Influencing Production of Secondary Metabolites With the changing environmental conditions and human activities, it is becoming difficult to produce adequate amount of herbal plants. Therefore, most cultivation methods often focus on manipulating certain components of the plants to ensure production of quality herbs. Modification of the plants often produces desired characteristics. These modifications and other natural evolutionary changes might result in production of herb species with the capacity of thriving in difficult environmental conditions (Shahzad, Sharma, & Siddiqui, 2016, 176). The major advantage of ensuring genetic modification of the herbal plants is to ensure adequate production and enhance the level of reliability of the plants; improvement in taste and nutritional value; ensuring reduction in losses likely to result from different biotic and abiotic stress factors like fungal and bacterial pathogens (Odabaç, Çirak, Radusiene, & Ivanauskas, 2010, 537). These objectives are the major factors motivating the modern genetic engineers and herb producers to design methods of ensuring effective identification, selection, and analysis of individual organisms, which have genetically improved features. For some medicinal plants, it could take up to 12 years for the development, evaluation, and releasing of new variety of the crop with regard to the international standards that requires the new varieties to meet various criteria. Modified plants have to genetically distant itself from the other varieties, genetically uniforms with other populations, and genetically stable. While the advancement in the modification methods hold the capacity of reducing the time taken to bring new herbs, it is important to have long evaluation period as it provides several opportunities higher guarantee of identifying and eliminating various deleterious features before commercial release. Although tissue cultures have not been able to produce many secondary metabolites, future developments need to hold promises for both polar and apolar constituents. Currently, the inability to understand the chemical complexities of plant metabolites and limitations associated with most instrumental methods represent the major challenges in the metabolomic approaches. Therefore, there is need to integrate the hyphenated methods like Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) and Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) to acquire the most exhaustible method of visualizing the metabolome of plants (Wermuth, 2003, 117). There have been several responses associated with environmental and seasonal stimuli that alter gene expressions resulting in large variation in the metabolite pool of the plant. The presence of excess metabolites in plants might cause chemical interferences in the performance of the method. For example, high metabolite levels can interfere with the ability of profiling the flavonoids within the plant extracts. Currently, the cells, shoot, transgenic roots, and root cultures are the major raw material for the cultivated herb species. All the cells are biosynthetically tot potent, thus, each cell can retain complete genetic information to ensure production of an array chemicals within the plant (Bertoli, Ruffoni, & Pistelli, 2010, 257). Some of the Plant Cell and Tissue Cultures (PCTC) generate high amount of specific secondary metabolites when compared with other cultivated plants. In such cases, it is critical to investigate the levels of phytochemical to guarantee the standard levels of the final product. With the recent development in the analytical technologies, there is more information on ways of acquiring the phytochemical profiles of the plant extracts. Very fast and high-resolution separation systems have been performed through the ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) with high accuracy meant for identification of the analytes (WHO, 2007, 31). Since standardization of the raw material is critical, the PCTCs should all the variations within the secondary metabolite yields. The achievement of such objective depends on the method used to select the PCTCs protocols through monitoring the biomass and simultaneous production of the metabolites. Most countries have policies and guidelines that regulate the ingredients of the herbal medicines produced through the PCTCs. Safety of the people utilizing the herbal plants is important; it depends on the technology and process system used (Ouibrahim & Caranta, 2013, 847). It is important to develop fast, reproducible, and sensitive analytical method of controlling the production of bioactive compounds as well as tracing the toxic metabolites in the PCTCs extracts. Environmental conditions play important roles in determining the quality of the herbal products. Medicinal herbs like any other plant interact constantly with the ever-changing and potentially damaging environmental factors. Being an immobile organism, medicinal plants have been able to evolve elaborate and complex defence systems involving several chemical metabolites meant to overcome the stress conditions. Secondary metabolites play significant roles in ensuring the adaptation of the plants to the harsh environmental conditions. The plants have limitless capacity of synthesizing the metabolites (Schmelzer et al., 2008, 187). Biotic and abiotic stress factors that affect the plants include light intensity, temperatures, and herb ivory and microbial attack, which make plants generate the defence factors and trigger several intricate biochemical processes. There have been several cases associated with alteration in genetic and protein levels due to stress conditions, which are reflected trough alteration of the metabolite pool of the influenced plant. Synthesis of the secondary metabolites usually involves tight regulation, which is often common either within the restricted and specific parts of the plant tissues or developmental stages. The regulations could be induced in a bid to respond to the stimulating factors (Ncube, Finnie, & Staden, 2012, 15). As survival strategy and a means of generating the diversity at the organism level, herbal plants could synthesis particular classes of secondary metabolites. The ability of the plants to undertake the vivo combinatorial chemistry through mixing, matching, and ensuring evolution of the gene products desired for the secondary metabolite synthesis pathways. Such synthesis also assists in creation of the unlimited pool of the chemical compounds, which humans tend to exploit for their benefits (Goodman, 2004, 271). Therefore, the secondary metabolites of the plants also offer diversified range of benefits including the medicinal features. Consequently, with the recent expansion in the interest to study secondary metabolites, several research fields like biochemistry, plant physiology, ecology, and molecular biology have been overlapping on one another’s boundaries and ensure the establishment of variations in the molecular mechanisms and metabolisms that underlie such diversities and ensure production of metabolite compounds in plants. With increased uses of medicinal herbs, quality and safety of the production is becoming a significant process. Therefore, it is both prudent and preferable to ensure proper mechanism of identifying the potential hazards of the products before they are commercially available to the other consumers. Where applicable, the botanical herbs selected for cultivation should be similar as that specified within the national pharmacopeia or the one recommended by other authorities in the end user’s countries. With countries lacking the national documents to guide the production of the medicinal herbs, there should be consideration of the species selection method (Chandra, Lata, & Varma, 2013, 87). Consequently, the newly introduced medicinal plants that have been selected for cultivation require documentation as the sources material to guide its application as the traditional medicine with specific countries. Medicinal herbs have bioactive compounds that accumulate within their tissues through different mechanisms such as biochemistry encrypted by the other regulation mechanisms. Various species of plants have evolved to form a singular set of mechanism meant for regulating biosynthesis of secondary metabolites (Reigosa & Pazos-Malvido, 2007, 1457). The commonly expressed secondary metabolites are the saponins that occur in significant in most plants. The variability of the amount of saponins in various species of medicinal herbs often result due to difference in environmental conditions like the geo-climate, seasonal changes, and various external conditions like temperature. Cultivation techniques also influence the quantitative and qualitative composition of the saponins. These variations have significant impact on the quality and features of the herbs cultivated majorly for medicinal purposes. Conclusion Medicinal herbs differ from other conventional pharmaceutical products often produced from the synthetic materials using reproducible manufacturing methods and procedures. Herbal medicines often result from materials of herbal value acquired from different geographical and commercial areas. It becomes difficult to ascertain the conditions to which the manufacturers subjected the herbs. 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