Research Topic · Peer-Reviewed

Herbal Medicine

Herbal medicine, or phytotherapy, is the use of plants and plant-derived preparations to prevent and treat illness and to support health, drawing on the pharmacologically active secondary metabolites that plants synthesize. Its preparations include infusions, decoctions, tinctures, extracts, powders, and isolated co…

Curated from this journal's research 📚 12 peer-reviewed articles cited Cited 103× across the literature 🔖 ISSN 3070-3360 🗓 Reviewed June 2026

Overview

Herbal medicine, or phytotherapy, is the use of plants and plant-derived preparations to prevent and treat illness and to support health, drawing on the pharmacologically active secondary metabolites that plants synthesize. Its preparations include infusions, decoctions, tinctures, extracts, powders, and isolated constituents, and its activity is attributed to phytochemical classes such as alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids, phenolics, glycosides, and saponins, which exert antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, hypolipidemic, antidiabetic, and other effects. Scientific study of herbal medicine spans the identification and standardization of medicinal plants, phytochemical screening and characterization, evaluation of antioxidant and biological activity, pharmacological and network-pharmacology approaches to mechanism and target prediction, and assessment of efficacy and safety, including drug-herb interactions and quality control of botanical products. It bridges traditional and ethnomedical knowledge with modern analytical and experimental methods, informing both integrative clinical use and the discovery of lead compounds for drug development. The peer-reviewed research collected under this topic addresses medicinal plants and their traditional uses, phytochemical and antioxidant analyses of plant extracts, comparative hypolipidemic and metabolic effects of botanicals, network-pharmacology prediction of plant-compound targets, and patterns of self-medication and herbal-care preference. Understanding herbal medicine is relevant to pharmacognosy, ethnopharmacology, and integrative and public health, where rigorous evaluation of efficacy, safety, and standardization governs the responsible application of plant-based therapeutics.

Research published in this journal

12 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.

2018

Medicinal Plants and their Traditional Uses

Keskin CumaliCorresponding author
Mardin Artuklu University, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, School of Health, 47100 Mardin, Turkey.
Exact topic Advances in Plant Biology Cited by 47 doi:10.14302/issn.2638-4469.japb-18-2423
2020

The Novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19): A Narrative Review

Rezapour BarataliCorresponding author
Department of Public Health, Faculty of Health, Assistant Professor, PhD in Health education and promotion, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran
Exact topic International Journal of Coronaviruses Cited by 2 doi:10.14302/issn.2692-1537.ijcv-20-3373
2017

Evaluation of Hexane Content in Edible Vegetable Oils Consumed in Iran

Hosseini HedayatCorresponding author
Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Nutrition Sciences, Food Science and Technology/National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Exact topic Experimental and Clinical Toxicology Cited by 24 doi:10.14302/issn.2641-7669.ject-17-1790

How this research is being cited

The 12 articles above have been cited 103 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.

A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Herbal Medicine, linking to each citing work.

Editorial oversight

Curated from peer-reviewed research published in International Journal of Complementary Medicine (ISSN 3070-3360).

This page summarises published research for orientation; it is not medical or professional advice.