More clinical studies with herbal medicines: A requirement for the future

Within the last 20 years the use of herbal medicine, especially in the European countries, was steadily growing. However, in the recent years the sales volume remains static, or at least the growth figures were lower. This development goes in line with the number of published clinical trials with these herbs and products. The frequency distribution demonstrates that since 1990 the number of clinical trials in this field is steadily growing until 2005. After two-year stagnation the number of published clinical trails falls by 45.9% from 2007 to 2008, with a tendency to further decrease in 2009. On the other side…