| Summary: | Objectives 1) To identify any clinical and theoretical interactions of commonly used herbal medicines with anticancer agents and adjunctive therapies used in the Hospital Authority. 2) To determine the drug-herb interaction in terms of the mechanisms of actions, degrees of severity and levels of evidence. Major Findings 14375 papers were found which may contain the information about anti-cancer drug-herb interaction. 12663 of them (either English or Chinese) have been collected from libraries. 1483 papers are written in foreign languages (neither English nor Chinese) and they will not be included in the review. 134 papers have not yet been obtained (it contributes to 1.1% of the death). All anti-cancer drugs have been reviewed and only 346 papers (245 in English and 101 in Chinese) are really related to drug-herb interaction. The level of significant of Drug-Herb Interaction consists of two main classifications, Level of Evidence and Degree of Severity, and produces “THREE” levels of significant. After reviewing all papers, 554 individual reports were generated and most of them fall into class B (377) in Level of Evidence, secondly class E with 163 reports, 6 and 8 reports fall into class A and C, respectively. In “Severity”, there are 4, 7, 1 and 74 reports belong to class High, Moderate, Mild and Insignificant, respectively. However, most of them fall into a special group that did not have adverse effect; they are either increase of decrease efficacy, or no effect or no information. |