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September 18, 2003


CHICAGO (Reuters) - The editor of a leading U.S. medical journal called on Tuesday for tighter regulation of herbal remedies because of "potentially misleading" health claims made by distributors of the products.

"Because many dietary supplements have or promote biological activity, they must be considered active drugs and regulated as such," wrote Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.



Classified since 1994 by federal regulators as untested dietary supplements, U.S. sales of such popular herbal remedies such as ginkgo biloba, St. John's wort, echinacea, ginseng, garlic, saw palmetto and kava kava have risen nearly fivefold in the past decade to $18 billion in 2001, a study appearing in the same journal said.

Researchers Charles Morris and Jerry Avorn of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital analyzed hundreds of Web sites pertaining to health-related uses of herbal products. After linking to vendors' sites, they found four out of five made one or more health claims and half of those omitted the standard Food and Drug Administration disclaimer the product "is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

"The study ... provides evidence for the easily accessible and widespread potentially misleading claims made by vendors of herbal products on the Internet," DeAngelis wrote in her editorial.

Another study in the journal found that St. John's wort, taken to treat depression, sped up the elimination from the body of a common class of pharmaceutical drugs.

"These findings underscore the potential inherent problems associated with the widespread practice of using herbal products (at the same time) with conventional medications," wrote John Markowitz from the Medical University of South Carolina, in Charleston.

Herbal remedies have also come under scrutiny recently because of deaths linked to high-profile athletes' use of the herbal stimulant ephedra.

The editorial said the solution was greater regulation, although that would increase the FDA's workload. "The U.S. public deserves to have the funding and resources allocated for their protection," DeAngelis wrote.