Unproved herbal products need separate regulation, UK

Main Category: Complementary Medicine / Alternative Medicine
Article Date: 08 Jul 2005 - 17:00 PDT

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The UK needs a separate regulatory body to distinguish unproved herbal products from more rational treatments, say experts in this week's BMJ.

There are some herbal medicines of demonstrable efficacy, write Drs Robin Ferner and Keith Beard. For example, a recent study found a standard extract of St John's wort was as effective as the antidepressant drug paroxetine.

For most herbal treatments, however, good trials of efficacy are lacking, and conducting them would be expensive.

Without evidence of efficacy, it is hard to judge the safety of herbal medicines. Quality of manufacture is also a serious problem, as the concentrations of compounds in unstandardised herbal products can vary several hundredfold.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regards herbal medicines as dietary supplements, which must not bear claims that cannot be backed up by scientific evidence.

In contrast, the European Union is introducing a simple registration procedure for herbal products that have been used for many years, while the UK is considering a Herbal Medicines Advisory Committee to advise ministers directly on the regulation of herbal medicines. This raises concern over why products that make medicinal claims should be judged on plausible traditions rather than scientific analysis.

"Herbal products for which there are reliable data could be granted standard marketing authorisations. If the rest were judged by a separate body, and by different criteria, we could certainly distinguish rational therapies based on good evidence of efficacy and safety from products that lack those attributes," say the authors.

"Advocates of the use of unproved herbal products would then be able to take separate and full responsibility for them."

Editorial: Regulating herbal medicines in the UK BMJ Volume 331, pp 62-3
Click here to see the full editorial:
http://press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/july/edit62.pdf

Click here to view full contents for this week's journal:
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/july/contents.pdf

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