Drug development with hints from traditional Indian Ayurveda medicine: hepatitis and rheumatoid as an example.

Although many drugs have been developed by pharmaceutical companies, there are many diseases which can not be cured with these drugs. In order to overcome this problem, the combination of Western and Eastern medicine has been proposed. Ayurveda is traditional Indian medicine established B.C. and is accepted throughout the world today. Due to its effectiveness and fewer side effects, Ayurveda will provide us with many hints for drug development. In the present review, we discuss the possible application of Ayurveda in drug development taking into account the following two points, i) herbs used in Ayurveda contain many unknown active components, and ii) Ayurveda provides new therapeutic approaches. In the case of drugs for the treatment of chronic hepatitis, we get hints from active components in the herbs used in Ayurveda. For rheumatism, we obtain hints for new pharmacological approaches from this medicinal approach.