Many slimming products are complex mixtures of herbs that contain organic compounds that may induce or inhibit drug metabolising enzymes (e.g. cytochrome P450) and drug transporters (e.g. P-glycoprotein). These interactions may reduce or increase serum antiretroviral drug concentrations. Subtherapeutic antiretroviral drug levels in patients lead to suboptimal viral control whilst increased conc...

Perceptions of safety and/or cultural mores prompt individuals to seek herbal slimming aids in preference to conventional dietary, physical activity and medication-based protocols. In recent years, terpenoid-containing dietary supplements have been implicated in causing severe and sometimes fatal hepatotoxicity. Teucrium polium (germander) was the first of these herbal products to be clearly li...

Sir, Chinese herbal nephropathy (CHN) is a newly described type of interstitial nephritis with a characteristic histological pattern. It was initially described in a series of Belgian patients who were inadvertently given a contaminated herbal preparation as part of a slimming regimen w1x. The toxic agent was putatively identified as 'aristolochic acid' (AA), the active principle from species o...

We thank Dr. K Appelhans et al. for their comments [1] on our paper [2], published online first in April 2012. In our review, we aimed to draw the attention of physicians to the uncontrolled and increasingly alarming use of herbal products and dietary supplements in the general population. In fact, in Italy this phenomenon, though still limited, has rapidly increased over the last few years. He...

Indonesia is known for its biodiversity of various types, example, plants, in there are around 9000 species plants that have traditional medicinal properties, 5% as phytopharmaca ingredients, and 1000s plant can be used herbal medicine. People often manage herbs with chemicals so they not by the regulations set government, this evidenced findings medicine (BKO).. This review article draws from ...

A variety of dietary supplements are presently available as slimming aids, but their efficacy has not been proven. One such slimming aid is the bean extract, Phaseolus vulgaris. The aim of the present systematic review is to evaluate the evidence for or against the efficacy of P. vulgaris. Electronic and non-electronic searches were conducted to identify relevant human randomised clinical trial...

The development of an optical sensor-based test strip for the detection sibutramine HCl adulteration in traditional herbal products has been studied. medium was cellulosic paper immobilized with Dragendorff’s reagent and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as precursor using sol-gel method. presence changed color from yellow to orange-red. change scanned converted RGB values ImageJ software. intens...

OBJECTIVES To review pharmaceutical analogue adulteration of non-prescription slimming products. DESIGN Retrospective study. SETTING Tertiary referral centre for toxicology analysis, Hong Kong. PATIENTS All patients known to have been hospitalised after taking slimming products adulterated with pharmaceutical analogues from September 2004 to December 2006. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Age, rea...