What is in your herbal medicine?

In focus / 25 June 2020

Photo: Paulius Dragunas, Unsplash

Journey into the jungle with the Drug Safety Matters podcast to explore the wild and fascinating world of working safely with herbal medicines.


Herbal substances can be found in a number of pharmaceutical drugs, cosmetics and food supplements – so it's not surprising that using plant names inconsistently can have serious health consequences. But with so much confusion around medicinal plant names, it’s easy to get it wrong.

In the latest epsiode of UMC’s Drug Safety Matters podcast, host Federica Santoro speaks to Bob Allkin from the UK’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to try to clear a path through the undergrowth. Fede and Bob discuss how common, scientific and pharmaceutical plant names differ; how Kew’s Medicinal Plant Names Service works, and the ways in which healthcare and pharmacovigilance professionals can avoid mistakes when working with herbal medicines.

You can subscribe to Drug Safety Matters through your favourite podcast player, or listen on the web here.

Kew Gardens' Bob Allkin joins Federica Santoro in the studio for the Drug Safety Matters podcast. Photo: UMC

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Bob Allkin's work was also featured in an earlier Uppsala Reports article, Navigating the plant-names jungle.

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