Subject: Re: "Some herbal remedies could severely harm liver"

From: [email-masked] (Scott Ballantyne)
Date: 19 Feb 1995 18:46:30 -0500

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Jet Silverman) writes:
> 
> Give me a break. After thousands of years of comfrey use, two people in 
> all of history have been documented to have had liver problems because of it.
> What about the children who needed organ transplants after taking just 
> one adult dose of Tylnol. (sp?)
> Often you will find that the people who have real trouble with herbal 
> medications have been taking up to 10 times the effective dose.
> There are risks with herbal meds. But they are small next to the risks of 
> OTC and perscription meds.

Oops, your mistake, I guess. I can name three cases without even going
to look them up, one of them was a 13 year old boy, a 23 year old
male, and a 49 year old women. There are *numerous* reports of this
occuring - in fact I believe that veno-occlusive disease from
consumption of things like comfrey is now considered the #1 cause of
this disorder. Here's an old quote from the Adverse Drug Reaction
Bulletin, Appendix II, Oct 1983:

"The ingestion of these alkaloids has been associated with a
characteristic liver disorder, first described in 1951 in the West
Indians, in which an acute stage of hepatomegaly and ascites progresses
to a chronic cirrhotic stage characterized by widespread occlusion of
the small hepatic veins. Cases of hepatic veno-occlusive disease
attributed to pyrrolizidine alkaloids have been reported throughout
the world. Some of the patients have died of fulminant hepatic failure
secondary to severe centrilobular necrosis. The syndrome has been
encountered in Britain, caused by herbal tea made from various Ilex
plants. Comfrey is a very popular herb which is not only potentially
hepatotoxic, because of the pyrrolizidine alkaloids it contains,m but
is also known to produce hepatocellular adenomas and haemangiosarcomas
and an increased incidence of bladder tumours in rats."

Comfrey contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids and unlike 'tylnol' does not
come with a warning label...

sdb
-- 
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 16 Feb 1995 21:47:46 GMT

>   [email-masked] (Richard A. Schumacher) writes:
>  (As reported in the Dallas Morning News, Monday 13 Feb
>  1995 page 8D)
>  
     [snip].
>  
>  "Could some of these cases be due to unrecognized ingestion
>  of hepatotoxic "alternative" herbal products?", Dr. Koff
>  speculates.
>  
>  In addition to chaparral, many other herbal remedies have 
>  been found to cause liver damage, he writes. Those include
>  germander, comfrey, mistletoe, margosa oil, mate tea,
>  Cordolobo yerba tea, pennyroyal oil and others.
>  
>>>>
    
     Oh, yeah, and don't forget about Tylanol too......

     Aside from the fact that >anything< taken to excess can harm
an individual, what else is new?

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