[Multimorbidity and multi-target-therapy with herbal drugs]

The active components of herbal drugs and substances are pleiotropic multi-ingredient compounds with multitarget properties including antiinflammatory effects. A pleiotropic inhibition of inflammation could play an important role in mutlimorbide patients as an attempt of prevention or retardation of metastasis. A large number of experimental data for European and non-European herbal drugs as well as various herbal drug combinations suggest such a possibility. Despite the so far small number of clinical studies, such an experimental herbal treatment could appear to be reasonable and acceptable, provided that there are data available on quality and safety of these herbal drugs by treatments of patients with various diseases. Besides, herbal drugs and substances play a growing role the treatment of patients with multimorbidity. Many of these herbal drugs have antiinflammatory effects beside their proved symptomatic efficacy in a lot of other diseases. The specific selection of herbal drugs that are efficacious in specific indications and additionally showed antiinflammatory effects offers the possibility of simultaneous antiinflammatory and specific efficacy. St. John's Wort and milk thistle belong to the oldest and to the best experimentally and clinically examined herbal remedies. The spectrum of internal and external uses of Hypercum perforatum as a multicompound herbal drug includes functional gastro-intestinal complaint and illness, skin disease, mucosal lesion, superficial injury, depressive upset and depression, somatoform disorders, restlessness, nervosity, convalescence, exhaustion and sleep disturbances respectively. The plurivalent character of the multicompound even enables a broad spectrum of activity. This might justify to prefer St. John's Wort to other drugs in a wide range of treatments: In multimorbide patients with depression or in depressive patients with coronary heart disease the anti-inflammatory effects could mean an additional advantage. However, at present there is still a great need and demand for therapy-oriented clinical research.