De Smet P A
Drug Information Center, Royal Dutch Association for the Advancement of Pharmacy, The Hague, The Netherlands.
J Ethnopharmacol. 1993 Mar;38(2-3):197-208. doi: 10.1016/0378-8741(93)90016-x.
Herbal pharmacoepidemiology concerns itself with herbal drug uses and effects in large numbers of people. This new methodology can make substantial contributions to our understanding of herbal drug markets. Not only can it improve the timely detection and the quantitation of adverse reactions to botanical medicines, it can also help us to recognize beneficial effects of herbal preparations. Moreover, it can increase our social and economic knowledge about herbal drugs by correlating the utilization patterns of these preparations to socially relevant determinants and prices. Since such studies may require an internationally accepted herbal drug classification, a special set of herbal classification codes is proposed, which is fully compatible with the so-called ATC-classification. This latter system is endorsed by the Regional Office for Europe of the World Health Organization as the drug classification to be used in international pharmacoepidemiological studies.
草药药物流行病学关注大量人群中草药的使用及其效果。这种新方法能够为我们对草药市场的理解做出重大贡献。它不仅可以提高对植物药不良反应的及时检测和定量，还能帮助我们认识草药制剂的有益效果。此外，通过将这些制剂的使用模式与社会相关决定因素和价格相关联，它可以增加我们关于草药的社会和经济知识。由于此类研究可能需要国际认可的草药分类，因此提出了一套特殊的草药分类代码，它与所谓的ATC分类完全兼容。后一种系统得到了世界卫生组织欧洲区域办事处的认可，作为国际药物流行病学研究中使用的药物分类。
