Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5617
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
British doctors issue cancer warning over Chinese liver tonic
AFP 2006 Jul 20
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060720/hl_afp/healthdisease
Keywords:
longdan xiegan herbal tonic aristolochic
Notes:
Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:
Just because a plant has been used in medicines for thousands of years doesn’t mean it can’t cause cancer!
Beware the logic which says – ‘if people have been using it since ancient times, it must be safe.’
It isn’t necessarily so!
Full text:
British doctors issue cancer warning over Chinese liver tonic
Thu Jul 20, 7:22 PM ET
British doctors have called for stiffer controls over Chinese herbal medicine, reporting the case of a young man who developed cancer after taking a liver tonic which contains a carcinogenic herb.
The case study, to be published in The Lancet on Saturday, concerns a 30-year-old Chinese man who was referred to a kidney clinic at London’s Whittington Hospital in 2003 after passing blood in his urine.
The patient had been taking a herbal tonic called longdan xiegan wan for five years in order to “enhance” his liver, the doctors write.
Investigators found he had a bladder tumour, which was then surgically removed. He has since developed recurrent bladder tumours and developed kidney failure, requiring dialysis.
Longdan xiegan wan is derived from a plant called Caulis aristolochia manshuriensis (Chinese name kuan mu-tung), the most important compound of which is aristolochic acid.
Aristolochic acid leapt to notoriety in 1993, when more than 100 patients at a Belgian dietary clinic suffered kidney damage after being exposed to it. Lab tests showed that high, cumulative doses of this compound also caused cells to become tumorous.
As a result of this scare, the United States, Canada, Britain, Malaysia and other countries either banned aristolochic acid or issued strict warnings about it.
In 2002 the manufacturer of longdan xiegan wan, China Tong Ren Tang — China’s oldest supplier of traditional medicine — replaced the herb it uses in the tonic. In 2004, a group of 100 Chinese renal patients reportedly launched a class-action lawsuit against China Tong Ren Tang, in the first such consumer action in Chinese history.
The Lancet authors say that despite the crackdown, products containing aristolochic acid can still be easily purchased over the Internet, which “highlights the dangers of unregulated herbal therapy.”
Chinese herbal medicine has enjoyed an explosion of interest in Europe and the United States in recent years, but this surge has also roused fears that plant remedies, despite their innocuous image, can have undocumented side-effects.
In an editorial, The Lancet says that China’s long history of herbal remedies is a potential treasure trove for Western drug designers.
It notes, for instance, that today’s frontline treatment for malaria, artemisinin, derives from a herb that Chinese traditional doctors used for centuries against this disease.
Even so, herbal products “like any medicine, have the potential for side-effects, drug-drug interaction and contamination,” the British journal says. “They all need regulation as a drug.”
Separately, the French health products watchdog, known by the acronym of Afssaps, warned on Thursday of two cases of hepatitis that were linked to a North American plant called black cohosh (Actaea racemosa).
The herb is being sold as a treatment for menopause symptoms.
Afssaps warned the public about the sale of “unauthorised plants which claim to be therapeutic or beneficial for health” and are often found on sale in French supermarkets or over the Internet.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
