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The use of herbal products continues to expand rapidly across the world and concerns regarding the safety of these products have been raised. In Thailand, Thai Vigibase, developed by the Health Product Vigilance Center (HPVC) under the Thai Food and Drug Administration, is the national database that collates reports from health product surveillance systems and programmes. Thai Vigibase can be used to identify signals of adverse events in patients receiving herbal products.The purpose of the study was to describe the characteristics of reported adverse events in patients receiving herbal products in Thailand.Thai Vigibase data from February 2000 to December 2008 involving adverse events reported in association with herbal products were used. This database includes case reports submitted through the spontaneous reporting system and intensive monitoring programmes. Under the spontaneous reporting system, adverse event reports are collected nationwide via a national network of 22 regional centres covering more than 800 public and private hospitals, and health service centres. An intensive monitoring programme was also conducted to monitor the five single herbal products listed in the Thai National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), while another intensive monitoring programme was developed to monitor the four single herbal products that were under consideration for inclusion in the NLEM. The database contained patient demographics, adverse events associated with herbal products, and details on seriousness, causality and quality of reports. Descriptive statistics were used for data analyses.A total of 593 reports with 1868 adverse events involving 24 different products were made during the study period. The age range of individuals was 1-86 years (mean 47 years). Most case reports were obtained from the intensive monitoring programme. Of the reports, 72% involved females. The herbal products for which adverse events were frequently reported were products containing turmeric (44%), followed by andrographis (10%), veld grape (10%), pennywort (7%), plai (6%), jewel vine (6%), bitter melon (5%) and snake plant (5%). Gastrointestinal problems were the most common adverse effect reported. Serious adverse events included Stevens-Johnson syndrome, anaphylactic shock and exfoliative dermatitis.Adverse event reports on herbals products were diverse, with most of them being reported through intensive monitoring programmes. Thai Vigibase is a potentially effective data source for signal detection of adverse events associated with herbal products.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) among generalpopulation of Quetta city, Pakistan. METHODS: The study was designed as a ques-tionnaire-basedcrosssectionalanalysis.EuropeanQualityofLifescale(EQ-5D)wasusedforassessmentofHRQoL.Atotalof1500healthyparticipantsfromMarch2011to July 2011, aging 18 years and above were approached. Descriptive statistics wereused to describe demographic characteristics of the general population. Percent-ages and frequencies were used to categorize the categorical variables, whilemeans and standard deviations were calculated for the continuous variables. In-ferential statistics (Mann-Whitney and Kruskal Wallis tests) were used where ap-propriate. HRQoL was scored using values adapted from the UK general populationsurvey. All analyses were performed using SPSS 16.0. RESULTS: One thousand fivehundred questionnaires were distributed and 1255 were returned (with responserate of 83.67%). Six hundred and forty three (51.2%) were males. Majority (n 427,34.0%)werecategorizedinagegroupof28-37years.Threehundredandthirtythree(26.5%) had intermediate level of education. Two hundred and ninety one (23.2%)had monthly income of in between 10001-15000 Pakistan rupees with 828 (66.0%)having urban residency. HRQoL was measured as 0.64 0.21 and VAS score was68.71 11.71. Only age and marital status, among all demographic characteristicshad significant relation with HRQoL score (p 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Results of thepresent study provide the general health status of healthy population of Quettacity, Pakistan, which could sever as baseline data for further investigations.