**12. Some herbal medicine products clinically evaluated for safety**

There have been few reports of the clinical safety of herbal product used in TM.A coded herbal medicine made of *Saraca indica,* Foeniculum vulgare, Juniperus communis*, Mentha piperita* and Zingiber officinale used to treat dysmenorrhea was found to be safe from such toxic effects as hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity and other side effects such as menorrhagia, gastro-intestinal disturbance and palpitation in a random-controlled clinical trial [43]. Also an unnamed herbal product made of Capparis spinosa root, Cichorium intybus seed, whole plant of Solanum nigrum, *Terminalia arjuna* bark, Cassia occidentalis seed, aerial part of *Achillea millefolium* and whole plant of Tamarix gallica and used for the management of liver disorders evaluated clinically was well tolerated and did not produce any adverse event in participants [44]. Tetteh et al. [12] reported that a Ghanaian polyherbal medicine, Adutwumwaa malamix, used in the treatment of malaria did not show any hepatotoxic or hematotoxic effects nor any adverse complaint in the populations studied for its clinical effectiveness and safety. Turkson et al. also reported the safety of another Ghanaian herbal medicine for the treatment of malaria and indicated that kidney and liver function tests and full blood count were within normal range at the end of the study, an indication that the product is clinically safe [45]. The tea bag formulation of the root powder of C. sanguinolenta has effectively treated acute uncomplicated malaria on relatively short treatment regimens and did not show any toxicity in man [46]. This was against the fact that the aqueous extract of the root is genotoxic in the Chinese hamster lung fibroblast (V79) cell line [42, 47] and the ethanolic extract of the stem increased platelet counts in albino rats [48].
