J Ethnopharmacol. 2017 Apr 18;202:154-161. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2017.03.008. Epub 2017 Mar 8.
- 1
- Institut für Lebensmittelchemie, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Schleinitzstrasse 20, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany.
- 2
- Institut für Pharmazeutische Biologie, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Mendelssohnstrasse 1, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany. Electronic address: t.beuerle@tu-braunschweig.de.
Abstract
ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE:
Herbal medicines
have been used for centuries for the management and treatment of
various ailments due to the belief that they pose only little or no
health risk and side effects, and also, in part, due to their
availability, affordability and/or self-supply. However, the increasing
information over the recent years on the occurrence of pyrrolizidine
alkaloids (PAs) in honey, herbal food and tea products has raised
concerns about the safety of herbal medicines with respect to contamination. To this day, little is known on the occurrence of toxic PAs in herbal medicines,
especially in tropical West Africa. The aim of this study was therefore
to determine the PA content of 70 well-known and widely patronized
plant-derived medicinal preparations, which are commercialized in Ghana
and some West African countries, in order to ascertain their potential
health risk.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
PAs
of the herbal medicinal products, sourced from specialized drugstores
and mostly regulatory approved, were analyzed for their PA content by a
HPLC-ESI-MS/MS sum parameter method.
RESULTS:
The
results show that a total of 60% of the analyzed herbal products were
PA positive, indicating an average PA-concentration of 25.0μg/kg. The
maximum PA level (1290.0μg/kg) was attributed to a regulatory-approved
herbal medicine not known, according to the list of declared
ingredients, to contain PA-plant parts. Interestingly, higher PA content
(average, 30.2μg/kg) was detected in regulatory-approved herbal medicines, in contrast to lower amount (average, 8.0μg/kg) detected in non-regulatory-approved products.
CONCLUSION:
The findings of this study clearly demonstrate that herbal medicines
containing PA plants as ingredients, as well as some of those
containing plant species not known to produce PAs, are likely to contain
hepatotoxic PA at levels higher than the daily dose in food and herbal
medicinal products proposed by the European Medicines Agency (i.e.
0.35μg PA per day for 50kg adult and 0.14μg PA per day for 20kg
children). Hence, regulatory authorities are advised to carry out more
rigorous quality control tests with respect to PAs so as to minimize the
exposure of the consumers to these toxic compounds.
Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
KEYWORDS:
Food safety; Ghana; HPLC-ESI-MS/MS; Herbal medicine; Pyrrolizidine alkaloid
