[Recent progress of international harmonization of crude drugs and medicinal plants--activity of FHH (The Western Pacific Regional Forum for the Harmonization of Herbal Medicines)].

The Western Pacific Regional Forum for the Harmonization of Herbal Medicines (FHH) was established in 2002. The general proposed objective of the FHH is to promote public health by recognizing and developing standards and technical guidelines that aim to improve the quality, safety and efficacy of herbal medicines. At a sub-committee meeting of FHH nomenclature and standardization held in Tokyo, all the participants recognized the importance of comparing the descriptions of herbal medicines contained in member countries' pharmacopoeias or monograph standards as the first step in the harmonization of nomenclature and standardization. It was agreed to set up five expert working groups (EWG) to carry out the following specific tasks: 1) Nomenclature, 2) Testing Methods in Monographs, 3) List of Chemical Reference Standards (CRS) and Reference of Medicinal Plant Materials (RMPM), 4) List of Analytically Validated Methods, and 5) Information on General Tests. In this review, we report four topics of FHH activities from 2002-2009 as follows: 1) Comparative study on testing methods and specification values for crude drugs used in monographs among four Western Pacific regional countries (Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam), 2) Comparative study on TLC conditions for identification, chemical assay conditions for component quantification used in monographs among the four countries, 3) Comparative study on general testing methods for crude drugs among the four countries, 4) Comparative study on TLC identification for crude drugs used in monographs among the four countries considering harmonization and clean analysis.