HIV-AIDS And Bioactive Natural Products

Herbal drugs have a prolonged history of frequent use and documentation in texts of established systems of medicine indigenous to a particular country. There is a great demand for these medicines in the developed as well as developing countries because of their wide biological activities, higher safety margin than the synthetic drugs and lesser costs. Since these medicines are prepared from materials of plant origin they are prone to, deterioration and variation in composition. Extremely limited knowledge about the ingredients in the herbal drug formulations and their effects in humans, the lack of stringent quality control and the heterogeneous nature of these preparations all necessitate the continuous monitoring of the safety of the herbal products. The World Health Organization has recognized the importance of traditional medicine and has created strategies, guidelines and standards for botanical medicines. It is necessary to develop methods for rapid precise and accurate identification and estimation of active constituents in order to bring out consistency of important constituents in the formulations. In present volume Quality Control and Standardization of the book series Compendium of Bioactive natural Products an attempt has been made to cover the recent progress in standardization of the herbal/ traditional drugs and strategies adopted for quality assurance. The book is not only an excellent source material for the scientists and teachers but also for research workers working on different aspects of bioactive natural products and comprises fourteen original research papers/review articles, and we believe, it shall receive an overwhelming response from our esteemed readers hailing from various corners across the globe.