Indian herbal medicines in the treatment of liver diseases: problems and promises.

Plant drugs are known to play a major role in the management of liver diseases. There are many plants and their extracts that have been shown to possess hepatoprotective activities. There are more than 300 preparations in Indian system of medicine for the treatment of jaundice and chronic liver diseases. About 600 commercial herbal formulations with claimed hepatoprotective activity are being sold all over the globe. The active phytochemical fraction that imparts hepatoprotective activity has been identified in many plants. These phytochemicals can be isolated and developed as single-ingredient drugs, with quality and standards of modern medicine. The major problem faced with herbal products is their standardization and their quality assurance. There can be batch-to-batch variations in their efficacies as a result of natural and genetic alterations, seasonal changes, differences in soil and climatic conditions, and nutritional status of the medicinal plant. Pharmacological validation of each hepatoprotective plant should include efficacy evaluation against liver diseases induced by various agents. The most effective drugs for each kind of liver disease have to be selected by separate efficacy evaluations. To treat liver disease of known, unknown, or multiple causes, a combination of different herbs with active fractions (or purified compounds) has to be developed. They may prove to be useful in the treatment of infective, toxic, and degenerative diseases of the liver.