Ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe; Zingiberis rhizoma) is worldwide used not only as spice in foods and beverages, but is also ingredient in numerous food supplements and herbal medicinal products.
Due to the huge number of published studies on this herbal drug from 2008 to 2025, a revision of the last ESCOP-monograph “Zingiberis rhizoma” (released in 2009) was urgently required. During this work, approximately 500 articles were classified as relevant concerning clinical aspects and therapeutic indications. The evaluation showed, that deficits in the quality control of preparations, in animal models and clinical studies (e.g. missing information about the ethnicity of participants, differences in results depending on sex/gender etc.) have a significant influence on the rating of reliable herbal medicinal products.
As such factors play a relevant role for other phytopharmaceuticals as well, they were compiled in a review article for the example ginger. This paper was recently published in the journal “Planta Medica” and there the “Choice of the Editor” in October. The article is open-access.