Herbal Pharmacoepidemiology: Exploring the Application of Pharmacoepidemiology Principles in Herbal Medicinal Products by Advancing Evidence-Based Medicine

Dear Colleagues,

Herbal pharmacoepidemiology is a rapidly evolving and emerging scientific field of research that employs principles of pharmacoepidemiology exploring the rationale, utilization, effectiveness, safety profile and potential benefits of herbal medicines’ use within real-world settings and across different populations. This Special Issue aims to unveil the importance, objectives and impact of herbal pharmacoepidemiology research in the scientific community and beyond. Herbal pharmacoepidemiology endeavours to investigate the use of medicinal herbal products in diverse populations in depth, assessing herbal medicines’ safety profiles, therapeutic outcomes, and potential adverse events or interactions with other traditional medications, promoting the rational use of herbal medicines while ensuring the public health safety and patients’ benefit. By exploiting robust pharmacoepidemiological methods and leveraging the power of real-world data evidence, this scientific field aims to bridge existing gaps of knowledge between herbal medicine and modern healthcare practices.

This Special Issue on “herbal pharmacoepidemiology” aims to explore and tackle the increased interest, concerns and further need for evidence-based research and real-world data evidence in the emerging field of herbal medicinal products, advancing scientific knowledge and clinical practice with a main focus on public health and population/patient safety. The investigation, assessment and evaluation of herbal medicinal products across different large-scale populations and a variety of geographic regions regarding their effectiveness, patterns of use and safety profile will provide valuable insights and assist in indicating the potential benefits and risks associated with herbal treatments. The evaluation of herbal medicinal products’ use, focusing on the correlation with diverse demographic characteristics and pathogenesis statuses, is of great importance. The pharmacoepidemiological approaches may also assist in developing a better understanding of the distribution of herbal medicines and availability in the markets concerning their appropriate use and public health safety. Moreover, some pharmaco-economic insights about herbal drugs can be provided using evidence regarding the utilization patterns of these products, their prices and other socioeconomic factors. The evidence-based information provided on herbal pharmacoepidemiology will play a crucial role in enhancing and informing the field experts’ scientific knowledge, decision-making processes, regulatory frameworks, clinical practices, stakeholders’ attitudes, public health strategy interventions, population/patient patterns of use and health risk perception about herbal treatments. This Special Issue, in addition to advancing the evolvement of herbal pharmacoepidemiology, will also promote the potential integration of herbal traditional medicines into modern clinical practices with the goal of improving overall healthcare.

It is concluded that the findings and outcomes derived from herbal pharmacoepidemiological studies possess great capacity to positively impact patient treatments and outcomes, public health and clinical practice protocols and regulations, legal frameworks and related policies, as well as the overall advancement of the field by focusing on the better understanding of herbal medicines and their appropriate implementation in clinical practice.

This Special Issue may include, but is not limited to, the topics suggested below:

• Examining and assessing the mechanism of action, efficacy and safety profile of herbal medicinal treatments by using real-world data evidence that could provide insights for good clinical practice and development of protocols, guidelines and recommendations ensuring patients’ benefit and safety.
• Investigating the use and evaluating the potential benefits and risks of herbal medicines in chronic diseases and especially mental health disorders.
• Exploring the existing regulatory frameworks and policies concerning the development, production, availability in the market, distribution, and use of herbal medicinal products focusing on public health and safety of users.

• Using real-world data evidence for the optimization of medicinal products’ formulation, route of administration and dosage regimens, ensuring their efficacy and safety as therapeutic choices.
• Investigating patients’ experiences using herbal medicines for a variety of conditions via users’ statements sharing their opinions, patterns of use, health risk perception and factors influencing their decision making and preferences concerning these therapeutic approaches.

• Exploring novel and cutting-edge methodological research approaches in herbal pharmacoepidemiology such as big dataset sources and advanced statistical analysis approaches to enhance the innovation, validation and impact of studies in this field.

• Evaluation of medicinal products’ utilization across different populations and diseases by performing epidemiological correlations with demographics and ethnographic methodologies.
• Medicinal products and drug interactions via thorough investigation of potential serious adverse effects and interactions between the herbal medicines and traditionally used medications indicating strategies of associated risk minimization with concurrent use.

Acknowledgment: We would like to express our sincere appreciation to Ms. Elena Deligianni for her invaluable contributions to the literature review and her assistance in inviting potential authors for this special issue.

Ms Elena Deligianni,
Pharmacologist, PhDc

Affiliations:
Laboratory of Hygiene and Environmental Protection, Medical School, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
Department of Clinical, Pharmaceutical & Biological Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Personal Homepage:
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elena-Deligianni-3
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edeligianni/

Research Interests:
pharmacoepidemiology; neuropsychopharmacology; addiction medicine; psychoactive substances; ethnopharmacology; natural substances; herbal medicine

Dr. Christos Kontogiorgis
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pharmacoepidemiology is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• natural products
• herbal medicines
• medicinal plants
• ethnopharmacology
• pharmacoepidemiology
• drug utilization
• real-world data evidence
• herbal toxicity
• population-based studies
• public health
• herbal products regulations
• medicinal plants pharmacovigilance
• herbal drugs’ efficacy and safety
• herbal products and drug interactions
• pharmacological mechanisms
• medicinal products development and quality assurance
• traditional medicine
• adverse effects
• medicinal plant therapies