Medicinal plants have been used to fight human and animal diseases in Asia for thousands of years and are still being used widely in China, Japan, India and other Asia countries in the 21st century. A lot of medicinal plants have been proven effective and safe in the treatment of numerous diseases and clinical symptoms and there is an increasing interest in developing new medicine from these natural resources.

Scientists around the world spent decades of years and billion of dollars trying to identify the effective components in medicinal plants and to understand the mechanisms of the therapy of various disorders with medicinal plants. The research literature of medicinal plants increased exponentially in recent years. There is no doubt that these research literature about medicinal plants obtained after years of tremendous efforts are of great value for further exploring these natural secretes and developing new medicine from nature.

Unfortunately the literature of medicinal plants is scattered in even much more tremendous chemistry, biology and medicine literature. Collecting all literature of medicinal plants on a special subject is time-consuming and sometimes an impossible job. It is the purpose of Phytohits to provide a useful tool for scientists to search relevant research information on Asia medicinal plants.