Farnsworth N R
Program for Collaborative Research in the Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago 60612.
Ciba Found Symp. 1994;185:42-51; discussion 51-9. doi: 10.1002/9780470514634.ch4.
The value of ethanomedical information in drug development is based on several factors: accuracy in recording or observing the medical use of the ethnomedical preparation, whether or not the ethnomedical use can be corroborated under scientific conditions in the laboratory, the formal or informal experience of the practitioner who provides the information, the role of the placebo effect and perhaps many others. Published ethnomedical information has many strengths and weaknesses relative to the ability to establish a corresponding biological effect in the laboratory. Many of the publications contain insufficient detail for the laboratory scientist. The ability to correlate ethnomedical reports with corresponding scientific studies could lead to improved selection of plants for further study in the areas of arthritis, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, hypertension, malaria, pain and fungal and viral infections. These analyses have been accomplished by computer analysis utilizing the NAPRALERT database. This combination of analysing ethnomedical information and published scientific studies on plant extracts (ethnopharmacology) may reduce the number of plants that need to be screened for drug discovery attempts, resulting in a corresponding greater success rate than by random selection and mass bioscreening.
记录或观察民族医学制剂医学用途的准确性、民族医学用途在实验室科学条件下能否得到证实、提供信息的从业者的正式或非正式经验、安慰剂效应的作用以及可能的许多其他因素。相对于在实验室中确立相应生物学效应的能力而言，已发表的民族医学信息有诸多优缺点。许多出版物提供给实验室科学家的细节不足。将民族医学报告与相应科学研究相关联的能力，可能会改进在关节炎、癌症、糖尿病、癫痫、高血压、疟疾、疼痛以及真菌和病毒感染等领域进一步研究的植物选择。这些分析是通过利用NAPRALERT数据库的计算机分析完成的。这种对民族医学信息与已发表的关于植物提取物的科学研究（民族药理学）进行分析的结合，可能会减少药物研发尝试中需要筛选的植物数量，从而比随机选择和大规模生物筛选有更高的成功率。
