Herb Favored by Hep C Patients Has No Medical Benefit: Study
Herb Favored by Hep C Patients Has No Medical Benefit: Study.
No help with Milk Thistle….but there are a lot of newer agents under investigation that look promising.
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Herb Favored by Hep C Patients Has No Medical Benefit: Study — 2 Comments
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When you read the study, the study’s authors final comment is that the particular brand used, Legalon was ineffective. Not that milk thistle was ineffective. There are many, many European studies, using different brands and formulations that have good, positive clinical studies (The Austrians and Germans usually do excellent work.) Apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Also, the treatment protocols in other studies used IV solutions of milk thistle for 14 days in hospital; if they tried to used oral dosing to reach the same levels, the patient would have to take so many pills that it was found to be not feasible. So, they didn’t even use the same dosages. How can one make an accurate assessment. Additionally, at what stage where the Hepatitis C patients…what stage were the patients in previous studies. Could it be that the patients in this study were so far advanced, or were they allowed to consume some food or beverage that would interfere with the effects. Too many questions.
Yes…apples to apples. However, the referenced study was looking at high dose oral treatment with a specific formulation, which is a real world application here in the US. Patient’s need to understand that the formulation promoted and available to them here in the US is ineffective. That said, the data from intravenous administration in Europe do show evidence of HCV RNA suppression, but there are no data to show that IV Silymarin/Silibinin alone results in sustained viral responses (SVR). If you have a reference that disputes that, please provide it. Some small European studies do show a possible benefit in combination with pegylated interferon and ribavirin as rescue therapy, but now that we are in the era of direct anti-viral therapy, IV formulations may be of less relevance.