Evaluation of aflatoxin contamination in crude medicinal plants used for the preparation of herbal medicine

The medical focus is now on phytofoods, drugs and the consumption of medicinal plants is expanding worldwide. Safety and quality of herbal preparations is of great concern. Quality determines reproducible efficacy of herbal drugs and also safety is a concern both for public and health authorities in many countries specially developing ones. The reason attributed is that many contaminants and microbes that may cause quality deterioration and directly harm to the consumers, find entry in the crude herbal materials during collection and storage. The safety of these products is partially compromised due to the microbial presence, especially toxigenic fungi. The present study was designed to investigate the microbiological quality after storage of locally sold raw medicinal plants that were supplied to different pharma units involved in the preparation of herbal and various formulations of ayurvedic drugs. Twenty samples of raw medicinal plants were stored at room temperature for a year and subjected to microbiological evaluation and found that most of the samples loaded with bacterial and fungal contents, do not comply with the FDA regulations. The presence of aflatoxin gave signals of aflatoxin producing fungi i.e. A. flavus and A. parasiticus. So, there is an urgent need of making strategy to control the microbes during pre-harvest and post-harvest procedures. This study is an attempt to emphasize the need for consistent quality assessment of crude herbal drugs for safe therapeutic products suitable for human beings. Our findings may help in instituting public health standards towards production and safety of herbal drugs worldwide.