Journal of Biomedical Sciences ISSN 2254-609X 2016 Vol. 6 No. 2:10 iMedPub Journals ht tp://www.imedpub.com Research Article © Under License of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License | This Article is Available in: www.jbiomeds.com 1 DOI:10.4172/2254-609X.100054 Arezou Rezaei 1,2 , Azad Farzadfard 3 and Atefeh Amirahmadi 1,2 1 School of Biology, Damghan University, Damghan, Iran 2 Insttute of Biological Sciences, Damghan University, Damghan, Iran 3 School of Biology, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran Corresponding author: Arezou Rezaei  arezaei@du.ac.ir School of biology, Damghan University, Damghan, Iran. Tel: 0098-9123325792 Citation: Rezaei A, Farzadfard A, Amirahmadi A. An Encyclopedia of Herb-Disease, a Quick Shortcut for Herbal Research: A Comprehension Based on Iranian Herbal Studies. J Biomedical Sci. 2016, 6:2. An Encyclopedia of Herb-Disease, a Quick Shortcut for Herbal Research: A Comprehension Based on Iranian Herbal Studies Abstract The use of herbal medicine has been faced with a huge welcome by patents and scientsts, as well as drug industries. It seems that reducing the tme of research, economizing investments with beter safety, and conductng high-quality botanical research are essental and indispensable. This study aimed to introduce the frst reciprocal herb-disease encyclopedia and to recount some of the salient points of herbal research based on Iranian studies. A search limited to Iran was conducted using 36 search terms in the data banks Pubmed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Wiley, and SpringerLink up to the end of 2012. Data including the investgated disease(s) and common and scientfc names of the investgated herbs were extracted from the ttles and abstracts of 1310 artcles. Investgated subjects and diseases have been categorized in 18 groups: cancer, cardiovascular, cellular-molecular, embryology, endocrinology, genito-urology, gastrointestnal, gynecology, immunology, infectous, metabolism, mucocutaneous, musculoskeletal, neuroscience, ophthalmology, renal, reproductve, and respiratory topics. Herbs including Crocus satvus L., Allium satvum L., and Zataria multfora Boiss from totally 560 studied herbs were the most studied ones. Only 69 of 560 studied (12.5%) herbs were endemic to Iran. Due to the vast majority of informaton available for herbs and diseases, an herb-disease encyclopedia comes to the help of herbal researchers and enthusiasts to fnd that which herb is useful or recommended for which kind(s) of health problems, and/or for the management, pretreatment or treatment of a specifc disease or disorders. Keywords: Encyclopedia; Herbal medicine; Traditonal medicine; Research; Iran Received: October 22, 2016; Accepted: December 05, 2016; Published: December 13, 2016 Introducton The use of medicinal plants in therapy has been known for centuries in every culture and civilizaton [1,2]. Traditonal medicine is an important part of human health care and there is an increasing worldwide demand for botanicals in all countries [1,3]. In other words, patents desire to beneft from the use of complementary and alternatve medicine (CAM) such as herbal medicine. However, sometmes they are not informed that herbal therapy, especially over a proven conventonal therapy, may be toxic and dangerous [4]. In order to decrease this kind of risks, clinicians and pharmacists need to be informed about herbs and other CAM practces [5,6], especially with their own country endemic, traditonal herbs [7]. On the other hand, the drug discovery process is becoming extremely expensive for the pharmaceutcal industry. Natural drug discovery based on ethnopharmacology and traditonal medicines is becoming an atractve area [8]. Medicinal herbs and related herbal products are important targets of patent claims since they have become of great interest to the internatonal drug and cosmetc industry [1]. However, there are many problems associated with botanicals research, for instance limited data exist on the safety and efcacy of botanical products [7,9]. Therefore, reducing the tme of research, economizing investments with beter safety and conductng high-quality botanicals research are essental and indispensable. To do this, a quick access to valid informaton is requisite.