Introduction:
While in Europe the scientific awareness in the field of liver and natural products is presently mainly focused on herb induced liver injury (HILI) (1), in Asia, the focus of a number of recently published reviews is on hepatoprotective effects of herbs (2). But also in Europe, there is a high prevalence of hepatic disturbances due to different causes, so that an overview of the hepatoprotective potential of herbs in use in Europe would be of therapeutic relevance, e.g. in herbs used in the therapy of gastrointestinal diseases.
Materials and Methods:
For identifying these plants, the HMPC monographs of the European drug agency EMA and in addition leading textbooks were evaluated, followed by a systematic literature search on hepatoprotective effects.
Results and Discussion:
There are HMPC monographs describing a use in gastrointestinal diseases for 50 medicinal herbs, others are described in textbooks. For the majority of these plants there are published data on hepatoprotective effects. In most cases these are data from pharmacological models of different types of liver diseases, as are e.g. for caraway, peppermint, lemon balm; liquorice, gentian, angelica root, but also fennel and greater celandine. In specific cases there exist also data from clinical trials, as e.g. case of artichoke and milk thistle. In addition there are data on herbal constituents as e.g. quercetin und sulforaphane available, which points to hepatoprotective effects of further plants, as e.g. bitter candytuft or horseradish.
Conclusions:
The herbs used in Europe have in many cases a hepatoprotective action, as e.g. in gastrointestinal diseases. By means of pharmacoepidemiological studies it could be evaluated whether this action is reflected in the respective patients also in a lower incidence of hepatitis of different origin.
References:
[1] Andrade et al. Semin Liver Dis 2018, 38:21
[2] Sultana et al. J. Ethnoph 2018, 216:104