Uppsala Reports Long Reads – The colour of signals Artwork

Drug Safety Matters

Drug Safety Matters brings you the best stories from the world of pharmacovigilance. Through in-depth interviews with our guests, we cover new research and trends, and explore the most pressing issues in medicines safety today. Produced by Uppsala Monitoring Centre, the WHO Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring.

The views and opinions expressed in the podcast are those of the hosts and guests respectively and, unless otherwise stated, do not represent the position of any institution to which they are affiliated.

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Drug Safety Matters

Uppsala Reports Long Reads – The colour of signals

September 29, 2023 • Uppsala Monitoring Centre

0:00 | 33:59

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Herbal remedies have been used for thousands of years to treat what ails us. Yet why do we still know so little about their potential side effects compared to modern medicines?

This episode is part of the Uppsala Reports Long Reads series – the most topical stories from UMC’s pharmacovigilance news site, brought to you in audio format. Find the original article here.

After the read, we speak to author Daniele Sartori to learn more about the challenges in herbal pharmacovigilance.

Tune in to find out:

Why the risks of herbals are rarely discussed
How to encourage safety data collection for herbals
How to improve herbal nomenclature and regulation

Want to know more?

Here are some of the resources cited in the episode:

Underreporting of adverse reactions to herbal remedies is driven by our attitude towards herbals themselves, but also by a lack of training on herbal medicines in healthcare curricula.
It is possible to safely use herbal medicines together with other medicines, but we must keep in mind some critical issues related to their interaction.
Simple videos can dramatically increase public awareness of ADR reporting schemes.
Kew Gardens’ Medicinal Plant Names Services offers a systematic overview of medicinal plants and their accepted scientific names.
The American Botanical Council suggests methods to uncover attempts to adulterate plant extracts.

For a comprehensive overview of herbal pharmacovigilance, check out this recent book by Joanne Barnes and colleagues covering advances, challenges, and international perspectives in the field.

For more on Daniele’s scoping review of signals or the thorny nomenclature of medicinal plants, listen to these episodes from the Drug Safety Matters archive:

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the monthly Uppsala Reports newsletter for free regular updates from the world of pharmacovigilance.

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