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How safe are your herbal remedies?
#1
The growth of alternative medicine including herbal remedies has led to increasing interest on the safety of remedies on the market. A recent study in BMC Medicine from research groups in the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and Bharathiar University in India raises worrying questions concerning the adequacy of testing and labelling of several commonly available herbal remedies. In the United States and in other countries these sorts of products can be bought in many different types of outlets from supermarkets to specialist health shops as well as on the internet. Despite this explosion of products and increasing consumer interest in adequate labelling of all sorts of products including food, there is currently no industry standard for identification the different plant materials that may be present in any given herbal remedy.

The study used a DNA barcoding technique based on sequencing of PCR products on samples taken from 44 herbal products from 12 companies and representing 30 different species of herbs and 50 leaf samples collected from 42 herbal species. The results were startling. They found that most of the products tested could be considered of poor quality. Most contained substantial substitution of products compared to what was stated on the label, including substitution with substances of known toxicity. In a striking example, one product labelled as St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), which people would typically take for depression and anxiety type symptoms, was found not to contain any St. John’s wort barcodes and instead to contain Senna alexandrina (fabaceae). Senna is a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved non-prescription herbal laxative which is not intended for prolonged use due to serious adverse effects including chronic diarrhoea, colon and liver damage, abdominal pain and epidermal blistering pain. In addition to substitution of products, most products also contained cheap filler substances such as alfalfa which did not appear on the labels. Other substances which were probably contaminants were also detected in many products, such as Parthenium hysterophorus (feverfew), a plant which is native to Eurasia and is an invasive weed in Europe, the Mediterranean, North America and Chile. Feverfew has been used in remedies for fever, migraine and arthritis but can have serious side-effects such as mouth swelling, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. It also can react with other medications and can contribute to bleeding risk, in particular if it is taken at the same time as blood thinning products such as aspirin and warfarin.

Overall, extreme caution should be exercised by anyone planning to use herbal remedies to try to treat any sort of condition. Awareness should be raised of the lack of regulation and testing of products in this field. The authors of the BMC study suggest that the industry needs to agree and adopt a best practice standard in testing of their materials and products, such as use of a DNA herbal barcode library for testing bulk materials. They point out that the type of contamination, substitution and use of fillers uncovered in theirs and other studies compromises what might otherwise be useful remedies and damages the reputation of the industry. Safety of consumers should be paramount and steps should immediately be taken to ensure that an adequate testing and labelling regime is adopted by the herbal remedies industry.

Sources

NEWMASTER, S.G., GRGURIC, M., SHANMUGHANANDHAN, D., RAMALINGAM, S. and RAGUPATHY, S., 2013. DNA barcoding detects contamination and substitution in North American herbal products. BMC Medicine, October 2013 DOI: 10.1186/1741-7015-11-222

BioMed Central Limited. "Analysis of herbal products shows contamination is common." ScienceDaily, 10 Oct. 2013. [Accessed 12 Oct. 2013]
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#2
There is a common delusion among general public that natural equals safe. Although acquired from different sources, natural products can still have a damaging effect on human organism. The problem is we only notice the natural compounds that have a strong and immediate effect, for example, Castor-bean plants and snake venom, but we forget that there are natural compounds which could have less noticeable and less aggressive side effects. That is usually the case with the natural substances that have some sort of pharmacological activity and are used for the preparation of natural products.

The other problem is the lack of relevant information from scientific studies for most of natural products. There are so many of these products on the market that it is not even possible to test all of them, although there are several companies dealing seriously with that issue.

When it comes to the flaws in manufacturing process, Food and Drug Agency (FDA) has recently announced that some of the products on the market advertised as natural actually contained the traces of some dangerous drugs. Those hidden drugs, although in small amounts, are much more dangerous than pharmaceutical formulations, because they could be taken by persons with contraindications to the specific drug. There are currently no regulations for restricted use of natural products, so the manufacturers sell them as natural remedies and add them to groceries.

More regulations should be established in order to prevent the harmful effects of natural remedies, and extensive testing should be conducted in order to investigate their safety and efficacy. There should also be more efforts to educate general public about the current uncertainty of natural products safety.
Sasa Milosevic
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