Ensuring the safety of botanical dietary supplements

Botanical dietary supplements with a history of safe human use may not require the same level of toxicity testing as synthetic pharmaceutical drugs. Most of the documented examples of acute toxicity caused by botanical dietary supplements have been caused by the substitution of toxic plants for the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of clinical nutrition 2008-02, Vol.87 (2), p.509S-513S
Main Authors: van Breemen, Richard B, Fong, Harry HS, Farnsworth, Norman R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
botany
Complementary Therapies - standards
Contamination
Dietary supplements
Dietary Supplements - standards
Drug Contamination - prevention & control
Flowers & plants
Herbal medicine
human health
Humans
literature reviews
medicinal plants
Pharmaceuticals
Phytotherapy
Plant Preparations - standards
Plant Preparations - toxicity
product safety
Safety
Toxicity
toxicity testing
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Summary:Botanical dietary supplements with a history of safe human use may not require the same level of toxicity testing as synthetic pharmaceutical drugs. Most of the documented examples of acute toxicity caused by botanical dietary supplements have been caused by the substitution of toxic plants for the desired species, probably through misidentification or production errors, or by contamination with pharmaceutical agents, either as a result of poor manufacturing practices or adulteration. Although more difficult to document, chronic toxicities attributed to botanical dietary supplements may be caused by contamination by heavy metals, pesticides, or microbes or by inherent properties of constituents of the botanicals themselves. Like drug-drug interactions, botanical-drug interactions can also be a source of toxicity. Most of these toxicity problems may be prevented by implementing good agricultural practices and good manufacturing practices and applying existing toxicity testing similar to those used in drug development or new toxicity assays under development based on proteomics, genomics, or metabolomics.
ISSN:0002-9165
1938-3207
DOI:10.1093/ajcn/87.2.509s