JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

According to the World Health Organization, more than 80% of the world's population relies upon traditional medicine. Traditional medicine uses single herbal drugs or compound herbal formulations for treatment. Over a few decades, computational methods have been used to study the molecular mechanism of phytochemicals of single herbal drugs. However, the in silico methods adopted to study polyherbal formulations (PHF) are not well documented or are still in the development phase.

Objective:

This scoping review protocol aimed to develop a search strategy for a scoping review that details the methods of in silico studies in polyherbal formulations of traditional medicines worldwide.

Methods:

The scoping review will be conducted based on the methodology developed by Arksey, O’Malley, and Joanna Briggs Institute. A set of predetermined keywords will be used to identify the studies from five databases: PubMed, Embase, Science Direct, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Two independent reviewers will conduct the search to yield a list of identified relevant studies based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Mendeley version 1.19.8, Rayyan, and JBI SUMARI will be used to remove duplicate citations, Title and abstract screening, and Data extraction, respectively. The scoping review will be reported based on the PRISMA- Scr guidelines.

Results:

The findings are expected to determine the knowledge gap in the applications of computational methods in PHF of any traditional medicine across the world. The study is expected to give answers to the research questions in the following backgrounds: phytochemical identification of PHF, criterion for target identification, methods adopted for in silico strategy, software used, and challenges in adopting in silico methods in PHF.

Conclusions:

This is an original study to identify the knowledge gap in the application of in silico studies in PHF in order to have a better understanding of computational methods used in the study of PHF. Clinical Trial: The protocol is registered in Open Science Forum.