AST Sports Science | Breaking Research 3-17-99 The popular herb St. John's Wort is toxic in AIDS patients

The popular herb St. John's wort is
toxic in AIDS patients.

Many HIV-positive individuals currently use St. John's wort in the belief that it can help fight the virus but a new study shows St. John's wort causes severe skin reactions in AIDS patients. And in contrast to previous reports, the study found that St. John's wort had no activity against HIV in patients tested.

To test the efficacy of the compound in fighting HIV in humans, the researchers attempted to administer St. John's wort to 30 AIDS patients with impaired immune systems over a period of 6 months.

They report that more than half (53%) of patients "discontinued treatment before completing 8 weeks of therapy because of... moderate or severe phototoxicity." Phototoxicity involves a red, itchy rash that occurs whenever skin is exposed to sunlight. Overall, just 2 of the 30 patients were able to tolerate a full 6 months of St. John's wort therapy.

This high occurrence of side effects meant that most subjects never received planned, higher doses of St. John's wort. In was concluded that the therapy "lacked demonstrable antiretroviral (anti-HIV) activity at the doses tested in our study," according to the researchers. They observed no change in either blood HIV load or CD4 counts associated with St. John's wort treatment.


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