NIH herbal database goes online
As part of the Congressional Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements, itself established in 1991, was mandated to create a science-based information bank on alternative medicine.
In January, the Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements (IBIDS) database went online, offering published and peer-reviewed literature, with search engines that cover medical, botanical, agricultural, chemical, and pharmaceutical sources.
The database covers more than 10 years of literature on alternative medicines. The NIH plans to update the system monthly or quarterly, depending on the frequency of the literature it draws on. The site is at http://nal.usda.gov/fnic/IBIDS/, while the NIH Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is located at http://altmed.od.nih.gov/oam.
Several additional credible Web sites on alternative medicine offer everything from pharmacology and known adverse effects to herb remedy indexes and dosages, FAQs, links, monographs and book reviews, to physician referrals and discussion forums.
The sites have been created by a wide range of groups, from nonprofit organizations and manufacturers to authors and advocacy groups. Some sites visited by Drug Utilization Review include: www.medherb.com, www.botanical. com, www.sbherbals.com, www.algy.com, and www.healthy.net/clinic/therapy/index.html.
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