A paper by U researchers presented recently at the annual conference of the American Headache Society received unexpected national media coverage.
The paper discussed the potential risks of taking popular herbal medicines with prescription headache medications.
The June 19 press release for the paper presented at the conference in Chicago was picked up two days later by news agencies across the country, ranging from the ABC News Web site to local newspapers in southeastern Washington state.
The paper, drafted by Carla Rubingh, Susan Baggaley and Kathleen Digre of the U Hospital Headache Clinic, was a review of literature on how the 10 most commonly used herbs-including St. John’s wort, ginseng and ginko-may interact with prescription drugs.
The goal of the paper was to identify the top 10 herbal medicines, determine their active ingredient and possible side effects, identify any possible drug interactions and how that may affect a headache patient.
The paper was researched out of concern for patients who don’t tell their physicians what herbal medicines they use and physicians who don’t bother asking.
“Herbals are still drugs,” Digre said. “We wanted to see if there would be drug interaction problems.”
They found documented cases of St. John’s wort interacting with Trazadone-a headache medication for sleep-to induce comas.
The paper also discussed theoretical drug interaction dangers, such as St. John’s wort mixing with serotonin drugs to potentially cause an overdose of serotonin, resulting in extreme agitation.
But the theoretical dangers discussed in the paper were heavily criticized by herbal medicine advocate Mark Blumenthal, executive director of the non-profit American Botanical Council.
In a recent interview, Blumenthal said he agreed physicians should be aware of which herbal remedies their patients are taking, but was upset by the press release issued by the American Headache Society.
Blumenthal argues the paper was merely a review and not original research published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. Consequently, there was no proof of the theoretical dangers.
He blamed the American Headache Society for the vast news coverage the paper received despite its lack of proof.
“The headache organization that released the press release must have known that the media would eat this stuff up and probably present this material in a very negative and, in this case, misleading way!” Blumenthal wrote in a recent e-mail.
But Robert Daroff, president of the American Headache Society, disagrees. The paper was published as an abstract in the May 2003 edition of Headache, the monthly journal of the society. Their journal, Daroff argued, is a peer-reviewed publication.
Daroff also predicts the paper will be published in full later in another peer-reviewed journal.
But he admits the paper was chosen to be one of four of the 180 papers presented at the conference to be highlighted in the press kit because of the issue’s appeal to the lay public.
In response to the accusation that the material was presented in a negative and misleading way, Daroff said the society has a responsibility to warn the public of potential risks from herb-drug interactions.
“If someone dies, it would be a big deal,” Daroff said. “It’s not something trivial. You don’t wait for someone to have a reaction if you know one is possible.”