ABSTRACT:
Herbal medicine, the backbone of traditional medicine, has been playing an important role on the human health f welfare for a long period. Patients suffered from various ailments consume herbal remedies along with prescription dicines with or without the knowledge of health care practitioner. The effectiveness of using herbal medicine in mbination with modern pharmaceuticals, and the possible adverse effects from herb-drug interactions remain to be erified. The challenge in herb drug interaction studies is that the animal pharmacokinetic studies cannot be extrapolated to umans due to the differences in the CYP450 enzymes. However the pharmacokinetic and dynamic studies can alarm the earchers to involve in further research. RA is a condition that causes inflammation of the lining of the joint or synovial membrane, which affects people in all age groups and is more common in women. The treatment strategy for RA includes Bon-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, glucocorticoids, Disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDS), and biological response modifiers. Andrographis paniculata Nees (AP) is widely used for the RA treatment in south India. The anti- inflammatory activity of the AP extract is attributed to Andrographolide. AG and AP extract (APE) significantly induced the expression of the cytochrome P450 (CYP) family, CYPIAI and CYPIA2. APE inhibited the activities of CYPIA2, CYP2C in rat and human liver microsomes. Prompted by these findings the herb drug interaction of AP and AG was investigated with selected anti rheumatic drugs. This presentation elaborates the Herb drug interaction by taking few studies carried out using AP and AG.