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SJW: silly science.

Submitted by Blog - Henriette on 17 March, 2006 - 10:00
Blog categories: 
Single herbs
Botanical name: 
Hypericum perforatum

Drop Hypericum extracts into blood serum and extrapolate from that to what it would do in whole people - and they call this science?

Here's a very silly bit of "science". It's pro-SJW (St. John's wort, Hypericum perforatum), which is rare, but that doesn't make it any better:

Dasgupta A, Tso G, Szelei-Stevens K.: St. John's wort does not interfere with therapeutic drug monitoring of 12 commonly monitored drugs using immunoassays. J Clin Lab Anal. 2006 Mar 14;20(2):62-67.

A few juicy excerpts from the abstract:

"... we studied the potential interference of St. John's wort with commonly monitored therapeutic drugs. Drug-free serum pools were supplemented with St. John's wort to achieve in vitro St. John's wort concentrations mimicking in vivo concentrations after both recommended use and overdose."

and
"Moreover, when drug-free serum was supplemented with very high concentrations of hypericin (2 microg/mL) and hyperforin (2 microg/mL) pure standard, we observed no apparent drug level with any immunoassay."

So dropping either St. John's wort (the type of extract isn't mentioned in the abstract - I expect they didn't just drop flowering tops in there) or hypericin or hyperforin into blood serum is equivalent to having the extracts go through the cyp450 enzymes in the liver? Live and learn ...

... not. Silly scientists, to even suggest that such a thing is possible. I think that the word nonsense actually comes from this type of non-science.

Comments

Submitted by daubermaus (not verified) on 18 March, 2006 - 23:42.

Here's a similarly silly study on ginseng.

Submitted by Henriette on 19 March, 2006 - 11:06.

Umm, no. That press report doesn't even come close in silliness to the SJW research paper.

1) It's not a research paper, it's a reporter's view of a research paper. There's a huge difference.
2) According to the reporter, they looked at people who use the plant, not at glass vials with isolated tissue. That's vastly different from the SJW silliness.

So try, try again. Reporters' views of various research papers don't count, though.