About Bio-Phytomedicine

Phytomedicine can be defined as the herbal medicine with therapeutic and healing properties.
It came into existence since the advent of human civilization.

Sheng Nongs Herbal Book is known as one of the preliminary sources of traditional folk knowledge based on the use of herbs in China and dates back to around 3000 BC.

It encompasses the details of almost 365 plants, animals, and minerals that find a place in medication. Our Earth houses approximately 420,000 species of plants; however, there is a lack of appropriate knowledge about them and their varied uses.

There are three major areas, namely, food (foodstuffs), medicine (folk and traditional medicines), and research (phytochemical analysis), that predominantly find an immense use of herbal preparations and products and hence can be explored further.

Gaining experience from random trials and careful observations from animal studies, people belonging to ancient periods started employing herbs as a therapeutic method against several illnesses.

Based on this, the ever so popular Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) as well as Indian herbal medicine, native to and prominently developed in ancient China, Japan, Korea, and India, continues to rule and influence the modern health-care even today.

As per the estimate of World Health Organization (WHO), herbal medicines are one of the most sought after primary health-care for around 3.5–4 billion people across the world, and a major portion of traditional medicine involves the plant extract–derived medicines and decoction which may also be termed as the “modern herbal medicine” (Pan et al., 2013).

A herbal medicine or a phytopharmaceutical preparation can be defined as a medicine derived exclusively from a whole plant or parts of plants and manufactured in a crude form or as a purified pharmaceutical formulation.

Although with the setting in of the industrial revolution and the advancements in organic chemistry, there was an equivalent increase in the preference for synthetic products as well.

However, the WHO emphasizes that between nearly 70% and 95% of the population residing in numerous developing countries still rely more on traditional herbal medicines for their primary medication against diseases (Mohamed et al., 2012).

Over the last decade, there has been an enormous rise in the products derived from medicinal plants in terms of interest and use.

Earlier what used to be the exclusive domain of health food and specialty stores has now gained considerable popularity into the mainstream market as evident by their impressive sale at some of the major retail outlets, their publicity, and advertising in the media, and due to the entry of various pharmaceutical giants in the area of phytomedicines (Briskin, 2000).

Phytomedicine, in amalgamation with various other health-care fields, has indeed revolutionized and strengthened the foundation of the existing health-care system and occupies a major stake in the industry.

Reports gathered from all over the world indicate there are around 35,000 species of plants that are currently being used in herbal therapies/recipes.

Although according to research data available only 20% of the total undergoes the stage of phytochemical analysis while 10% reach the biological screening stage.

The remaining still need some amount of exploration making use of modern technologies. The future of medicinal plant–derived drugs therefore seems to have tremendous scope for discovering some new and novel therapeutic strategies and products (Khan, 2015).