• Calls for more research, safety profiling of herbal remedies
• Urges producers to validate claims with scientific studies
New findings from the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) have highlighted that while dozens of herbal remedies may not harm the body, they also don’t deliver the healing they claim.
At a media chat held at the Institute’s headquarters in Yaba, NIMR disclosed that after evaluating 46 herbal medicines over six years, researchers concluded that efficacy, the very measure of a drug’s usefulness, is still missing. While dozens of herbal products circulating in the Nigerian market have been proven safe in laboratory studies, none have so far demonstrated the efficacy necessary to support their therapeutic claims.
Presenting their findings, the Deputy Director of Research in the Biochemistry and Nutrition Department of NIMR, Dr Oluwagbemiga Aina, said the institute’s Centre for Research in Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine has evaluated 46 herbal medicinal products and plant extracts over a six-year period.
“All of the products tested on animals were found to be safe, but when subjected to efficacy studies, none of them cleared the disease conditions they were meant to treat,” he explained.
According to Aina, the Centre’s work has ranged from acute and subacute toxicity tests to preclinical efficacy trials and preliminary clinical studies. Herbal eye medicines, bitters, rheumatism, malaria and typhoid herbal products were among those tested for acute toxicity.
Regarding efficacy, Aina alleges that such products demonstrated some suppression of malaria parasites in animal models but were unable to eliminate them. “Most only suppress the parasite without killing it,” he said, adding that this fell short of the standard seen with drugs such as chloroquine.
Aina urged herbal medicine producers to work closely with researchers to improve their products. “Herbalists and manufacturers should subject their remedies to safety profiling and identify the active ingredients responsible for any therapeutic effect. That is the only way to validate claims and ensure patients are not put at risk,” he said.
He further advised Nigerians to be cautious about untested remedies. “People should watch what they consume, especially when the efficacy is not guaranteed,” he warned.
A research fellow at NIMR specialising in microbiology and public health, Dr Afeez Adekola, who presented findings on antimicrobial resistance, explained that his recent study analysed 276 genes in Salmonella enterica and found that nearly all carried antimicrobial resistance traits.
More than half showed resistance to common drugs like penicillin and ampicillin, while others displayed resistance to quinolones, a key frontline treatment for typhoid.
“When we compared the strains, Salmonella typhimurium, which causes gastroenteritis, had more resistance genes than Salmonella typhi, the cause of typhoid fever,” he said.
According to him, some bacterial genomes carried up to 15 resistance genes, making them potentially resistant to nearly all frontline drugs.
Adekola attributed the rise to plasmid-mediated transfer, a process through which bacteria share resistance genes among themselves. He warned that without stronger antibiotic stewardship, better surveillance, and investment in new therapies, infections like salmonellosis could become more expensive and difficult to treat.
Aina recalled that the centre also played “a crucial role” during the pandemic by conducting studies on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, testing COVID Organics for safety, and running preliminary vaccine-related experiments.
Despite this, he admitted the centre continues to struggle with inadequate laboratory equipment, poor animal housing facilities, and limited funding. Even so, the centre has contributed to capacity building, training more than 500 industrial trainees, 150 undergraduate and HND project students, 50 interns, and 8 Ph.D. candidates since its establishment in 2017.
