Editorial: Pharmacokinetics of herbal medicines and herb-drug interactions

Editorial on the Research Topic Pharmacokinetics of herbal medicines and herb-drug interactionsHerbal medicines have provided a basis for health management and disease prevention in many Asia countries, including China, India, and Japan.Several herbal medicines have been evidenced scientifically for their efficacy and safety in rigorous clinical trials (Wang et al., 2011;Li et al., 2013;Shang et al., 2013;Song et al., 2019).In the past few decades, therapeutic regimen combining synthetic drugs with herbal medicines represent a promising strategy for preventing and treating multifactorial diseases.Such combination probably exhibits different mechanisms of actions and improves the pharmacodynamic effects and safeties.The thorough knowledge of mechanisms of and chemical basis for herbal medicine actions on therapeutic targets may provide a better rationale for the understanding of combination of drugs with different mechanisms, which are preferable in the polytherapy of diseases.To support the drug combination, the impact of such combination on therapeutic outcome needs to be assessed, including pharmacokinetic interactions mediated by drug-metabolizing enzymes and drug transporters.Commonly, most of clinically used herbal medicines are prepared from multiple herbs that contain hundreds of chemically diverse constituents, which may interact with a variety of drug-metabolizing enzymes and drug transporters in extremely complex ways (Ge, 2019).The complex interactions make a great challenge for an investigator to quickly and accurately find the key compounds responsible for therapeutic actions of the herbal medicines.Pharmacokinetic research provides a practical approach to identifying potentially important compounds (bioavailable at the action loci with significant exposure levels after dosing an herbal medicine).Better understanding of the pharmacokinetic behaviors of the bioavailable compounds is vital in evaluating therapeutic and adverse effects of the