400981 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Clinical Pharmacology, Gwynn Parry Jones, Crude Drug
Document Summary
As species face loss of habitat or overharvesting, there have been new issues to deal with in sourcing crude drugs. These include changes to the herb from farming practices, substitution of species or other plants altogether, adulteration and cross- pollination issues. For instance, ginseng which is eld farmed may have signi cant problems with fungus, making contamination with fungicides an issue. This may be remedied with woods grown programs, but they are insuf cient to produce enough ginseng to meet demand. The wildcrafted echinacea, black cohosh and american ginseng often rely upon old growth root, often in excess of 50 years of age and it is not clear that younger stock will have the same pharmaceutical effect. Black cohosh may be adulterated with the related chinese actea species, which is not the same. Ginseng may be replaced by ginseniodes from jiagolan which has been stated to have a different effect than the full panel root.
