Supplementary medicines are co-used in applications after conventional clinical treatment. The scientific mechanisms are based on nutrition and food science, and herbal ingredients for alternative medicines. Unlike drugs, supplementary medicines can't be directly used to treat diseases. They are a human body mechanism regulator and nutritional supplement. Beside supplementary foods, supplementary medicines also contain herbal extracts and purified ingredients which are natural bioactive drugs that can be used in clinical treatment.

However, many supplementary medicines lack clinical evidence of their efficacy. Clinical evidence is based on instrumental analysis, checking if the supplementary medicines contribute to the disease treatment. Instrumental analysis is based on the physical composition or physical and chemical properties of substances, which explores the internal relations and laws between the analysis signals generated by these properties and the composition of the analyzed substances, and then carries out qualitative, quantitative, morphological, and institutional analysis on them. For the observation of clinical evidence, in vivo instrumental analysis is difficult but important.

The aim of this Special Issue is to invite the submission of original research and review articles focusing on various topics related to the instrumental analysis for supplementary medicines in vivo.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• New herbal bioactive ingredients with evidence-based analysis
• Treatment of chronic disease with evidence-based analysis
• Toxicological analysis of herbal bioactive ingredients
• Pharmacological research with cellular mechanisms of the herbal bioactive ingredients
• Bioavailability of herbal extracts with evidence-based analysis
• Novel techniques in disease co-treatment with evidence-based analysis
• Instrumental analysis and chemical synthesis for herbal bioactive ingredients
• Industrial production of herbal bioactive ingredients
• Animal testing and clinical practice of herbal bioactive ingredients
• Agricultural effects for herbal quality with evidence-based instrumental analysis