Dangerous herbal medicine
Instead of herbal preparations – counterfeit
Alfiya Yenikeeva, RIA Novosti
Inexpensive herbal "medicines" from the Internet can be dangerous to health. Keeping silent about the true composition, unscrupulous manufacturers add potent substances there. RIA Novosti tells why you should not be treated with unregistered drugs.
Internet of Medicines
Roszdravnadzor is currently testing the drug "Valsartan", the active substance of which is produced by the Chinese company Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals (Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals). According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which decided to recall this drug, N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) was found in it, which is considered a probable carcinogen.
Roszdravnadzor checks only medicines dispensed through pharmacy chains, registration of biologically active additives (dietary supplements) is the responsibility of Rospotrebnadzor. However, there are many so-called "natural" drugs on the free market and especially online trading platforms that have not passed through regulators.
Cheap and dangerous
"At the beginning of May, my patient's mother, suffering from an adult form of atopic dermatitis, asked if I had heard about a Chinese ointment. She read good reviews about it, tried it and got a wonderful result: the rash went away immediately. Ointment costs a penny, unlike good emollients and steroid creams. I looked at the composition, it's in English – there's only an ointment base and herbs. But when I entered the name of the drug into the search engine, mixed with aggressive advertising, warnings from the British medicines regulator MAHR, as well as dermatological and educational sites fell out, saying with one voice: do not use ointment, it's dangerous!"– Sergey Butri, a pediatrician from Ivanovo, a leading educational blog dedicated to vaccination issues, tells RIA Novosti and evidence-based medicine.
According to MAHR (The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency), this "miracle" cheap ointment contains the steroid clobetazole propionate, which causes skin atrophy, perioral dermatitis and other side effects characteristic of steroid drugs when used uncontrolled. In addition, two antifungal components provoking heart failure were found in the ointment. There is not a word about all three substances on the package.
Among the supposedly natural remedies that can be bought online with home delivery are pills for babies that numb the pain when they are teething. They are declared as homeopathic (in fact, pacifiers), but huge doses of belladonna were found in them, significantly exceeding those indicated in the instructions. In the USA, after several fatal cases, they were banned and discontinued. However, the already released batches were not withdrawn.
Traditional medicine on steroids
On the packaging of medicines sold in In Russia, a registration number is indicated, by which you can check whether this drug is in the The State Register of Medicines or on the website of Rospotrebnadzor, if we are talking about dietary supplements. Otherwise, the State does not guarantee their safety.
Manufacturers of "miracle drugs" do not like to fully disclose their composition. In 2016, Rospotrebnadzor found the medicinal substance tadalafil, created for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, in several dietary supplements that increase potency in men. The manufacturers assured that the preparations contain substances of plant origin that coincide in a number of parameters with tadalafil, but they do not contain the substance itself.
Such a trick is very common. For example, some representatives of traditional Chinese medicine claim that the substances contained in the natural raw materials from which their medicinal ointments are made are similar in action to steroids. However, Singaporean scientists have shown that there is not enough scientific data on this. Moreover, in traditional herbal medicines, specialists often detect large doses of hormones. Such treatment is fraught with unpleasant consequences – for example, patients with diabetes develop Cushing's syndrome.
"We doctors have nothing against steroid and antifungal drugs, prescribe them in some situations and monitor for side effects. But to do this, we need to know what substance and in what concentration they contain. A manufacturer who declares his drug to be "natural phytotherapy" and at the same time mixes aggressive ingredients into it should be deprived of all confidence immediately, and ideally brought to legal responsibility," Sergey Butriy sums up.
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