Is Garlic a Safe Remedy: An Overlook Herb- Drug Interaction?

Objective-Traditional systems of medicine are mostly based on the use of herbs for the treatment of various diseases. Studies reveal that herbal products are more popular among the common people due to its fewer side effects, easy availability and low cost. Hence, these herbs are used throughout the world as preventive and curative medicines. However, these important herbs possess active chemical moiety that are responsible for their medicinal property. Thus, in reality, there remains a possibility of herb drug interactions when these are consumed along with other medicines. Unfortunately the concept of herb drug interaction is poorly known among the clinicians as well as common population. Even the scientific world was unable to explore the clinical relevance of herb drug interaction. Studies are being conducted throughout the world to investigate the effects of herb drug interaction, to ensure safety of therapy. In this present article effect of garlic was evaluated when used concurrently with other medicines.
Method- Documentations from original articles and case reports were obtained from various databases and were compiled for this present article.
Result- Total 24 articles documented various interactions of garlic with other synthetic medicines. Anticoagulants, antihypertensives, antiviral, anticancer, antidiabetic, antitubercular drugs were the major classes of drugs that were found to interact with garlic.
Conclusion- Therefore, case reports on adverse reactions due to the intake of garlic posed a threat to the safety of this herb. These findings initiated for exploration of the drugs that may interact with garlic and cause adverse reactions in patients.

Author(s): Anjan Adhikari, Rania Indu, Tapas Kumar Sur, Dipankar Banerjee and Anup Kumar Das

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