New approaches in developing medicinal herbs databases
Historically, medicinal herbs were used in various modern medical systems and traditional medical systems to prevent or treat diseases. Based on historical evidence, ∼60 000 years ago, plants have been used as drugs (1, 2). Since ancient times, people used medicinal herbs to treat their diseases and they looked for cure in the nature (3), recently, the use of natural medicine as a complementary and alternative medicine is increasing around the world, including in developed countries (4–7). Statistics show that ∼80% of the world population uses medicinal herbs or other natural products for their diseases (8). The prevalence of herbal medicine uses varies widely (6–48%) in European Union countries (6). In some countries, phytomedicine or herbal medicine is a part of the health-care systems (9, 10). In Germany, herbal medicine is known as one of the five main elements of classic naturopathy (phytotherapy, hydrotherapy, exercise therapy, dietetic therapy and ‘lifestyle regulation’ therapy) (11). Also, diverse groups of health-care professionals, namely, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and nonmedical complementary and alternative medicine practitioners are involved in herbal medicine (11, 12).
In China, herbal medicine has been integrated into the official health-care system, 95% of general hospitals have traditional medicine departments and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is used for the treatment of outpatients and inpatients in hospitals (13, 14). Also, in India an acronym for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa and Homeopathy (AYUSH) is a well-organized sector providing health-care services in both public and private sectors. In view of the strength of AYUSH systems in reducing the disease burden, the efforts to promote these systems and merge with conventional medicine are on for the last few decades (15). Effective integration strategies will promote communication and mutual understanding among different medical systems, evaluate medical care in its totality, ensure equitable distribution of resources, provide a training and educational program for both traditional and conventional medicine and finally generate a holistic health-care system (16). However, for the successful mainstreaming, the operational integration in terms of communication, information sharing and cross-referrals between the conventional and AYUSH systems is very important.
Until recently, information about medicinal herbs was limited to journals, manuals and textbooks. Recently, with the spread of scientific databases, a new way has been developed for sharing information on medicinal herbs (17). These databases collect and provide data on medicinal herbs, ingredients, 2D/3D structures of compounds, related target proteins, relevant diseases and metabolic toxicity, which are essential in medicinal herbs research studies for scientists, physicians and pharmacists (18). They support many aspects of biological research, including information about a gene or a protein and complex applications for data analysis. The usefulness of these databases critically depends on the volume of information, its correct interpretation and the regular updating of the content (19).
Modern biomedical databases generally are different in stored amount of data, specialization, functionality and type of access. However, with a few exceptions, all the available databases are voluminous and include complex data from multiple sources (20). Medicinal herbs databases as a group of biomedical databases have similar specifications. A huge amount of information, including taxonomy, common names, location, medicinal uses and used parts, and m