Screening and Quantification of Toxic Pyrrolizidine Alkaloids in Herbal Medicines Sourced from Ghana

摘要

Herbal medicines have been used since time immemorial for the management and treatment of various ailments due to the belief that they pose no potential health risk and side effects, and also partly because of their availability and affordability. However, the increasingly use of these herbal products over the years has raised concerns about their safety with respect to pyrrolizidine alkaloid (PA) intoxication. This study, therefore, aims at determining the PA contents of herbal medicines sold on the open markets, herbal shops and pharmacies in order to ascertain the potential health risk. PAs of 69 herbal remedies, mostly regulatory approved, were analysed by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS sum parameter methodl. The results show that 20 % of the analysed herbal remedies were PA positive, while the highest concentration of PAs (109 ug retrone-cine equivalents (RE)/kg/day) was attributed to regulatory-approved herbal medicine containing Heliotropium indicum as an ingredient. Also, the average PA-concentration of the samples in this study was 16 ug RE/kg/day. Generally, herbal remedies which have been mixed with honeys were observed to be PA negative, in contrast with higher amounts detected in capsulated herbal medicines. The findings of this study suggest that some PA-positive herbal preparations are likely to be hepatotoxic if consumed daily at the doses investigated in this study.