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Rheumatology Advance Access originally published online on August 25, 2006
Rheumatology 2006 45(10):1309-1312; doi:10.1093/rheumatology/kel248
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

‘Herbal medicine’ containing hidden prescription drugs

J. K. Dowman, F. H. Khattak, S. Elliott1, T. M. T. Sheehan1 and K. A. Grindulis

Department of Rheumatology, Sandwell General Hospital, West Bromwich, B71 4HJ and 1Regional Laboratory for Toxicology, City Hospital, Birmingham, B18 7QH, UK

Correspondence to: Dr K. A. Grindulis. E-mail: karl.grindulis@swbh.nhs.uk

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.


   Introduction
 
SIR, Patients may turn to herbal remedies if conventional treatment is perceived to have failed or causes an unwanted reaction. True herbal treatments can interact with standard medication but outcome may be dangerously unpredictable when ‘herbal’ treatments conceal prescription drugs with the potential to cause adverse effects or interact with medically prescribed and over-the-counter products. Reactions may then be incorrectly attributed to prescribed drugs. We present three cases to highlight this problem.


   Case 1
 
A Pakistani lady developed rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in 1993 at the age of 23, soon after coming to the UK. She was treated with anti-inflammatory drugs until referred to hospital in 1995, when sulphasalazine was added. In Autumn 1996, she started to take ‘herbal powders’, . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Case 2
 

   Case 3
 

   Discussion
 

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