Yerba buena (Mentha cordifolia Opiz), commonly known as mint, has been used in the country as a cure for headache, toothache, arthritis, and dysmenorrhea.

The University of the Philippines (UP)-Manila has successfully formulated from yerba buena’s extracts a clinical proven herbal medicine for post-operative pain management such as dental extraction, circumcision , child birth and minor surgeries without the side effects of common pain reliever.

“Yerba Buena tablet is the only clinically proven herbal medicine in the Philippines with analgesic effects, It has been proven efficacious for post-operative pain management and does not have the side effects of common NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs),” Ma. Christina Viñas of UP-Manila, one of the presenters of health and wellness technologies during the DOST's Strategy to Accelerate and Revitalize Technology Transfer (StARTT) in Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal,Quezon) Region Technology Transfer Day held on May 7.

She said yerba buena, also known as spearmint or marsh mint, contains Menthalactone β-sitosterol and β-sitosterol β-d-glucoside (BSSG) which has been shown to have analgesic or pain-relieving activity.

“The Tail flick analgesiameter showed its analgesic activity,” Viñas said.

She said human clinical trials have been conducted for Yerba Buena tablet.

“It has been proven safe and effective in relieving moderate to severe post-operative pain after circumcision, dental extractions, and childbirth (post- episiorrhaphy).equivalent to Paracetamol,” she said.

“For time of action, onset of action is within 10 minutes and total relief is complete in 30 minutes to one hour,” she added.

In terms of comparability, Viñas said Yerba Buena tablet had faster set of action in post-dental extraction and post- episiorrhaphy than Paracetamol.

“For its competitive advantages, we have compared Yerba Buena tablet from the famous anti-pain medicines in the market such as Paracetamol, Aspirin and NSAID.Its most significant competitive advantage is the adverse effects. Yerba Buena tablet has been proven to have rare to no side effects. The side effect is only nausea” she said.

Viñas noted that the revenue for the over-the-counter analgesic such as Aspirin and Paracetamol in the Philippines amounted to US$ 120.46 million.

“It has a compounded annual growth rate of 3.2 percent,” she said, citing that the market is expected to have a significant growth rate annually from 2019 to 2023.

She said global revenue for analgesic mostly generated in the United States amounted to US$ 5.36 billion.

“But, we are offering the strong know-how of the technology protected as a trade secret and that trade secret is in a technology transfer document that we will need to manufacture and register and market the Yerba Buena tablet in the Philippine market so you don’t have to invest more on the research and development of the technology,” Viñas said.

“For this Yerba Buena tablet who knows in the future, it will anti-headache just like Biogesic, but you will do is the product marketing to the customers, so you will get the revenue and you will just give us a portion of it through a royalty which UP Manila uses as a revolving fund for our other research and development.”