International Perspectives regarding the Use of Food/Natural Products as Drugs

Abstract

Even though the American public in 1983 spent in excess of $8.0 billion for prescriptions dispensed from community pharmacies—prescriptions that contained active principles still extracted from higher plants, there is no research program in American pharmaceutical firms designed to discover new drugs from higher plants. In spite of this, more than 119 drugs of known structure that are obtained from higher plants are used by physicians as drugs in countries throughout the world. These 119 drugs are obtained from only about 91 species of plants, of more than 250,000 species known to exist on this planet. The World Health Organization estimates that perhaps 80% of the more than 4 billion inhabitants of the world rely chiefly on traditional medicines (primarily plants) for their primary health care needs. In Japan, Kampo medicines (prescriptions containing several plants) are approved for reimbursement in the National Health Scheme. The value of these Kampo medicines in 1976 was about $12.5 million (US) and this increased to about $150 million (US) in 1983 (from 0.15 to 1.0% of total pharmaceutical expenditures in Japan). Similar situations exist with regard to the expanding use of plants as drugs in many other countries of the world. The reasons for physician and patient selection of treatment with plan preparations are presented.