Medicinal Plants Used for the Treatment of Hepatitis in Taiwan

Abstract

In an extensive ethnobotanical survey of the folk medicines of Taiwan, 69 kinds of crude drugs and 107 species of medicinal plants were found to be used for hepatitis treatments. The present paper is to update a list of medicinal plants used in the treatment of hepatitis and evaluate their liver protection by ethnopharmacological and pathological studies. Results show that some of these drugs have prominent therapeutic effects. Further investigation regarding the anti-hepatotoxic principles will be made.