Herbal medicines are increasingly used in Eastern countries and though they are not evidence-based, they have somehow also managed to find their way into the Western world. But they are not devoid of side-effects and liver damage and gut problems are most common of these. Morbidities and mortalities are associated with the use of these natural remedies and such cases are now occurring in significant numbers of users.
Liver damage and natural products
There is an ongoing craze for natural products especially herbal medicines. People start using them if they had problems with regular treatments. Some just use it after they get brainwashed into it during their oriental trips. But one cannot overlook the fact that these herbal drugs also contain phytochemicals that can harm the body especially the liver. Increasingly such hepatic damage cases are encountered in the users.
The damage can range from abnormal liver function tests without symptoms to death. It might come up in an acute form or slowly affect the liver killing its cells gradually. The damages have been severe enough to necessitate liver transplantation or even cause death.
Patanjali and its various fallacies and crimes
Companies and herbal medicines
There is very limited research carried out in the field of herbal remedies and Ayurveda. Most are just word-of-mouth traditional remedies. Only big names in the field such as Dabur, Himalaya have conducted studies on their products and formulated products for efficacy and safety before releasing them into the market.
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| Online herbal products (Source: Indiamart) |
But there are a number of small-scale industries or inflated companies such as Patanjali. The latter has political influence and is expanding its wings thanks to presence of gullible people around. But the bottom line is that none of the products of this firm are tested. They have come up with false claims about them including magical cures for coronavirus.
The business of herbal medicines is lucrative and runs in billions. And Westerners also have started using it. Around 15-20% of them have tried this sort of remedy in Europe. And in the USA, these figures are as high as 50%. This rise has taken place due to the false belief that herbal medicines are free of ill-effects. People procure it from shops as well as by online shopping. And the sad part is that laws related to sales of such natural cures are not regulated by FDA of USA or EU.
Herbal products
These are either marketed as crude extracts of roots, leaves, and flowers, or as botanicals with calculated concentrations of active ingredient, or as just commercially available branded products. The former two are prescribed. But the commercial products could be contaminated or adulterated or harmful chemicals may be part of them. These include heavy metals such as arsenic and also bacteria or fertilizers. All these take their toll on the liver that is used to detoxify substances in the body.
An Iceland study showed that 16% of drug-induced liver injury was due to such dietary natural supplement products. Similar figures come up from the USA. In Korea, cases as high as 62.5% had liver damage due to natural herbal products. The damage could be in the cells, bile ducts (cholestatic) or both. In order to know this, R-value is used. This is serum alanine aminotransferase of patient/upper limit of normal of alanine aminotransferase and this divided by ratio of patient's alkaline phosphatase to upper limit of alkaline phosphatase. If this value is 5 or more, it is hepatocellular, 2 to less than 5 is mixed, and less than 2 is cholestatic. Body-building products cause cholestatic damage while others cause liver cell damage. This is due to the added steroids in them.
Physicians should enquire into herbal drugs intake especially in liver cases and educate people against their use. Regulatory laws around such product sales should be established.
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