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ST JOHN'S WORT ADVISORY

© Karen Hamilton

Thank you to Mental Health Editor, John McManamy for this article:

Following two studies published in The Lancet and funded by the NIH, the FDA has issued a public health advisory on the risk of dangerous interactionswith St John's Wort and a number of prescription drugs.

In one study, the level of medicine in the bloodstream when St. John's wort was taken dropped dramatically enough for patients to begin to reject their transplanted hearts. The other showed that St. John's wort depressed the effectiveness of the drug Indivar, a protease inhibitor used to treat HIV patients.

The advisory warns against possible interactions with Indivar and other protease inhibitors. In addition, "St. John's wort appears to be an inducer of an importantmetabolic pathway, cytochrome P450," the FDA notes, where many prescription drugs are metabolized.

Accordingly, the advisory warns against possible interactions between the herb and drugs used to "treat conditions such as heart disease, depression, seizures, certain cancers or to preventconditions such as transplant rejection or pregnancy."

For more details, please see:

http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/advisory/st...

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