Quality control of herbal medicines produced at farmácia viva

Abstract

Empirical knowledge about the therapeutic potential of medicinal plants raises questions from the scientific community of whether herbal medicines used as antimicrobials are effective in the treatment of infectious diseases. The Brazilian Ministry of Health instituted the Farmácia Viva program whose purpose is promotion since the cultivation of plant species to the production and dispensing of herbal medicines. Thus, the objective of this work is to analyse the chemical composition and evaluate the microbiological activity of essential oil and herbal medicines produced by a Farmácia Viva, aiming to contribute to the quality, safety and efficacy of the herbal drugs distributed at SUS. To achieve this goal, the major compounds of the target species, will be isolated by different chromatographic methods, including column chromatography, preparative thin-layer chromatography, and high-performance liquid chromatography. Spectroscopic methods of nuclear magnetic resonance of one-dimensional 1H-13C-NMR, as well as, the bi-dimensional homonuclear (COSY), and the heteronuclear HSQC and HMBC, besides the mass spectra (MS) will be used for identification of chemical markers. The essential oils will be analyzed by GC-MS and HPLC-MS. Chromatographic techniques of HPTLC, HPLC-MS/MS, HS-SPME-GC-MS will be used for the phytochemical prospection and chemical quality control of the herbal medicines. The antimicrobial potential of the essential oils and herbal medicines will be tested against different strains of ATCC bacterial species as well as pandrug-resistant (PDR) clinical strains. It is expected that this study will be useful for identify the chemical markers from target species, besides to correlate the antimicrobial action exhibited by the extracts produced from these species with the occurrence of their volatile and non-volatile chemical constituents. (AU)