Dwivedi Shridhar, Aggarwal Amitesh, Sharma Vishal
Department of Medicine/Preventive Cardiology, University College of Medical Sciences, University of Delhi and GTB Hospital, Delhi, India 110095.
Trop Doct. 2011 Apr;41(2):113-5. doi: 10.1258/td.2010.100304. Epub 2011 Jan 24.
Many herbomineral preparations are currently being used as therapeutic remedies for common ailments. Commonly known cardiotoxic herbs are Aconitum ferox (aconite), Areca catechu (betel nut), Thevetia peruviana (yellow oleander) and Cleistanus collinus (oduvan). Herbs mixed with lead, copper and/or mercury are known to be highly toxic. They produce cardiac arrhythmias, mainly ventricular ectopics, ventricular tachycardia and various degrees of arterioventricular (AV) blocks. We report 12 such successive cases where the patients developed vague feelings of discomfort, dizziness, chest discomfort and ventricular arrhythmias following herbal drug ingestion which warranted the immediate discontinuation of the drug. Three of the patients died. This paper emphasizes the risk of unsupervised use of herbomineral preparations by patients who believe that the remedies are always 'safe' and the urgent necessity for the pharmacognostic identification of the constituent herbs, their toxicological studies, uniform nomenclature, authenticity and standardization of plants and their parts before advocating them for therapeutic use.
目前，许多草药矿物制剂被用作治疗常见疾病的药物。常见的具有心脏毒性的草药有剧毒乌头（乌头）、槟榔（槟榔果）、黄花夹竹桃（黄花夹竹桃）和克利须那草（奥杜万）。已知与铅、铜和/或汞混合的草药具有剧毒。它们会导致心律失常，主要是室性早搏、室性心动过速和不同程度的房室（AV）阻滞。我们报告了12例连续发生的此类病例，患者在服用草药后出现了模糊的不适感、头晕、胸部不适和室性心律失常，这使得必须立即停药。其中3名患者死亡。本文强调了患者在认为这些药物“总是安全”的情况下无监督使用草药矿物制剂的风险，以及在提倡将其用于治疗之前，对组成草药进行生药学鉴定、毒理学研究、统一命名、植物及其部位的真实性和标准化的迫切必要性。
