cahmri newsletter - issue 8
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Dietary Supplements and Food Safety
Cajanus is the name of the quarterly journal
published by the Caribbean Food and Nutri-
tion Institute, and it is known as a highly
reputable journal. In the issue Number 2,
Volume 42, 2009, there is an article, on “Food
safety – Dietary Supplements”, written on
pages 70 to 94, by Audrey Morris and Pear-
litta Lumsden. On page 52, according to the
Editor, this Cajanus issue “defines a dietary
supplement, looks at some testing and label-
ing aspects, and importantly, lists some popu-
lar products which are known to be harmful.”
It is a fact that herbal medicinal products,
vitamins and other specified items have been
regulated as dietary supplements in the
U.S.A., under the Dietary Supplements Health
and Education Act (DSHEA), since 1994; and
they are marketed as raw plant material and in
various other forms.
In the Cajanus article, the authors noted that
“in the Caribbean there is no legal or regula-
tory definition for standardized dietary sup-
plements”.
The authors offered much useful advice for
the consumer, especially because herbal prod-
ucts and other dietary supplements “are
mostly self-prescribed with little or no input
from informed health care providers... Many
herbal and other natural supplements have
powerful pharmacological effects that can
cause dangerous interactions with prescribed
or over-the-counter (OTC) medicines... Some
dietary supplements have real benefits and
some are unproven, while others have been
scientifically proven to be unsafe to human
health.”
While there is evidence concerning the safety
assessment of vitamin and mineral supple-
ments, information on herbal products re-
mains less available in the scientific litera-
ture.
Most of the statistical information dis-
played in this Cajanus article was sourced
from the situation with respect to dietary
supplements in the U.S.A., and some use-
ful data was given in the Tables provided,
such as:
“Table 2: Reported interactions of Vita-
mins and Minerals with Drugs;
Table 3: Reported Herb-Drug Interac-
tions;
Table 6: Some Dietary Supplements with
Adverse Effects/Associated Illnesses;
and Table 7: Some Dietary Supplements
with Insufficient Evidence to Support
Claims”.
A few errors and omissions remained
inside the Tables 6 and 7 and elsewhere;
and the few herbs included are more often
found growing in temperate countries
rather than in the Caribbean region. The
use of a common name alone, such as
Dandelion, would not determine which of
the following species might be involved,
namely Cassia ligustrina, Cassia occi-
dentalis, Cassia tora, Chaptalia nutans, and
Taraxacum officinale which grow in Carib-
bean countries.
Overall, this review article in Cajanus is rec-
ommended as a very useful and timely report
in the multidisciplinary subject area of food
safety and dietary supplements.
Inside this issue:
March, 2011 Volume 3, Issue:1
C A R I B B E A N H E R B A L M E D I C I N E R E S E A R C H I N S T I T U T E
CaHMRI News
DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS AND FOOD SAFETY
1
THE IDENTIFICATION OF MEDICINAL PLANTS
2
HARMFUL HERBS 3
mon names)
Botanical description
Parts used in commerce
identification.
The illustrations are with black and white line
drawings; and Heinrich emphasized that the
book was well-written, and could serve as an
excellent teaching tool in professions like
pharmacy and biology. He recommended the
book as a means “to convince policy makers
and the public in general about the essential
role of quality control in health sciences”.
The identification of medicinal plants
Michael Heinrich’s review was published on
this topic in 2007, on page 440 in Volume 111
of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology. It was
about the 2006 book by Wendy Applequist
carrying the title “The Identification of Me-
dicinal Plants. A Handbook of the Mor-
phology of Botanicals in Commerce”.
In his review Heinrich’s words were:
“For the non-expert a book with a title
focusing on identification of medicinal
plants may sound like one of the most
boring topics. However we are all very
conscious that poor quality in general
and the misidentification of material
used in the preparation of herbal medici-
nal products may well be one of the core
problems in the field of phytotherapy
and ethnopharmacy.”
“Phytotherapy” is the study of the use of
plant extracts in the treatment of illness.
When critically conducted, modern phy-
totherapy can be considered the scien-
tific study on the effects and clinical use
of herbal medicines.
“Ethnopharmacy” is the interdisciplinary sci-
ence that investigates the perception and use of
pharmaceuticals (especially traditional medi-
cines, but not only) within a given human soci-
ety. Ethnopharmacy includes medical anthro-
pology or ethnomedicine.
Wendy Applequitst’s book is one of the essen-
tial “tools that help to identify the starting ma-
terial” for the botanical medicines in interna-
tional trade. Therefore it contributes crucially
to the processes of quality control required in
the production of herbal drugs.
Heinrich reported that in this book, more than
one hundred and fifty different medicinal
plants commonly used in the herbal businesses
in North America are described. Each mono-
graph in the book covers topics, such as
Botanical details (including Latin bino-
mial, standardized common name, other com-
The identification of medicinal plants
Page 2
CaHMRI News
...IT CONTRIBUTES
CRUCIALLY TO THE
PROCESSES OF
QUALITY CONTROL
REQUIRED IN THE
PRODUCTION OF
HERBAL DRUGS.
Both the increasing awareness and consump-
tion of poorly regulated herbal medicinal
products today must be the reason for the
paper in Cajanus which is discussed above in
the current issue of this newsletter.
Because herbal medicinal products are made
from plants, it is important to know that some
plants are quite poisonous. There is good
supporting scientific evidence for this fact.
One example is the “AMA Handbook of
Poisonous and Injurious Plants” by K. F.
Lampe and M. McCann, which was published
in 1985 by the American Medical Associa-
tion. A number of plants used as medicinal
agents in North America and the Caribbean
are found in this handbook. What has been
described as its successor is the “Handbook of
Poisonous and Injurious Plants” by L.S. Nel-
son, R.D. Shih and M. Balick, which was
produced under the supervision of the New
York Botanical Garden and published in 2006
by Springer. These two handbooks are non-
alarmist reliable guides to an appreciation of
plants around us, many of which are safe,
though some are harmful. It is wise to recall
the saying in toxicology that “the dose makes
the poison”.
The use of common names alone for a plant
can lead to misidentification, which can lead
to toxicity arising in the preparation and for-
mulation of a herbal medicinal product. Con-
sider the situation with two Caribbean herbs
which are found in the “Atlas of medicinal
plants of Middle America - Bahamas to Yucatan”, which was written by J.F. Morton
(1981.C. Thomas, U.S.A.).
On pages 796 and 797 in Morton’s book, the
plant Nicotiana tabacum is described with
several common names, including Cutz, Ta-
bak, Tobacco and Yapo. According to the
folk traditional usage, “In Cuba and Vene-
zuela, fresh leaves are bound on the forehead
to relieve headache.” “In Trinidad, poultices
of the dried leaves are resorted to in toothache
and postpartum pain”. “In Curacao, the head
is washed with an extract of chewing tobacco
to get rid of lice”.
Scientific evaluation will show that its con-
stituents of nicotine and other alkaloids are
responsible for making Nicotiana ta-
bacum a toxic plant.
The second example concerns the tradi-
tional usage of Lantana camara. This
herb is described, on pages 739 to 742 in
Morton’s book, as having several com-
mon names such as Alantana, Black Sage,
Cariaquito, Red Sage and Wild Sage. In
Tobago this aromatic herb is known as
Graterwood. According to the folk usage
“In Jamaica and Trinidad, the plant or
flower decoction (after boiling in water) is a
remedy for colds and fever”. “In Costa Rica it
is used as a tonic and remedy for hyperten-
sion.”
In the scientific literature, Lantana camara is
described as a noxious weed that grows in
many tropical and subtropical parts of the
world. It has been much studied because in-
gestion of the foliage causes liver damage.
The plant is discussed in ”A Review of the
Hepatotoxic Plant Lantana camara” by O.P.
Sharma and colleagues, appearing on pages
313 to 352 in the issue 4 of Volume 37 of the
journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology. In
part, the review states that both ruminants and
nonruminant animals such as guinea pigs and
rabbits are susceptible to the hepatotoxic ac-
tion of lantana toxins. The hepatotoxins are
pentacyclic triterpenoids called lantadenes.
Green unripe fruits of the plant are toxic to
humans. “Management of lantana toxicosis in
animals is achieved by drenching with acti-
vated charcoal and supportive therapy”. This
clearly is a harmful herb. Again, “the dose
makes the poison”.
Harmful herbs
Page 3
Volume 3, Issue:1
THE USE OF COMMON
NAMES ALONE FOR A
PLANT CAN LEAD TO
MISIDENTIFICATION,
WHICH CAN LEAD TO
TOXICITY ...
FUTURE ISSUES will include:
*Antioxidants again?
* Legendary herbal aphrodisiacs
* Cocoa products
* “The Herbal Drug Industry” (a book
review)
To send us your comments
about this newsletter,
please contact;- The Herbal Institute at UTT at Tel: 1 (868) 673 0029 / 673 2654 compton.seaforth@utt.edu.tt or jennifer.paul@utt.edu.tt
Nicotiana tobacum
http://factoidz.com/common-
poisonous-plants/
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