Assessment of essential and non-essential elements in selected traditional medicines from India, Ghana and China
- PDF / 575,585 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 7 Downloads / 266 Views
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Assessment of essential and non-essential elements in selected traditional medicines from India, Ghana and China Eva T. Gyamfi 1,2 Received: 5 August 2019 / Accepted: 23 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Traditional medicine (TM) also known as folk medicine consists of medical knowledge systems that were developed over generations in various countries before the era of modern medicine. Over the last few years, there has been a shift in universal trend from modern medicine to TM because it is believed that these medicines are non-toxic to humans, have little to no sideeffects, are readily available and affordable. The purpose of this study was to investigate the essential and non-essential elemental concentrations of ayurvedic medicines (AM), Ghanaian traditional medicines (GTM) and Chinese traditional medicines (CTM). The results indicate that the mean elemental concentrations in TM varied greatly. The mean concentrations of copper and mercury in AM, GTM and CTM ranged from 4 to 45 mg/kg and 0.01 to 2 mg/kg, respectively. Multivariate statistical analyses applied to recognise inter-element associations indicated that at 0.05 significant level, there was a positive correlation between elements suggesting they may have originated from the same source. The study concludes by highlighting the need for monitoring of the elemental concentrations in commonly consumed traditional medicines regularly to detect contamination in these medicines since the occurrence of metals in these medicines above or below legally permissible limits can be harmful to consumers. Keywords Ayurvedic medicines . Ghanaian traditional medicines . Chinese traditional medicines . Concentrations . Toxic . Elements
Introduction There are different traditional medicine (TM) systems across the globe with different philosophies and cultures of origin. TM include medicines composed of herbs, herbal materials, finished herbal products that contain parts or a combination of plants and other plant materials as well as animal parts or minerals as active ingredients (WHO 2007). In recent years, Responsible Editor: Philippe Garrigues Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10607-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Eva T. Gyamfi [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
2
Nuclear Chemistry and Environmental Research Centre, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, National Nuclear Research Institute, P. O. BOX LG 80Legon Accra, Ghana
there are widespread production and use of TM such as ayurvedic medicines (AM), Ghana traditional medicines (GTM) and Chinese traditional medicines (CTM) across the globe. Ayurvedic medicine is widely practised in India with about 80% of the population using ayurvedic therapy (Dargan et al. 2008). Toxic elements particularly arsenic (As), mercury (Hg) and lead (P
Data Loading...
