The UK Medicines regulator has warned that patients taking herbal remedies to treat erectile dysfunction could be taking serious risks with their health.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the MHRA, has said that patients should avoid taking herbal ED products and should stick to the three clinically trialed remedies for the condition, Cialis, Levitra and Viagra.
The regulatory body said that often, herbal products contain unspecified chemical ingredients and are dangerous and misleading. In a statement, they said that frequently products that promised to be 100% natural were making false claims.
The products are sold either on the internet or through traditional herbal outlets. Each month, the MHRA announce that various supposedly herbal products have been discovered to contain illegal ingredients, such as sildenafil (the active drug in Viagra) or tadalafil (the drug in Cialis), though this is not declared on the ingredients list.
Both drugs should only be sold with a doctor’s prescription and can put patients health at risk if they have contra-indications for the medication.
The MHRA warned that taking medicines containing ‘random, uncontrolled quantities’ of the analogue chemical compounds could potentially cause serious reactions in patients, including strokes, heart attacks and severe hypotension.
Since 2005, the MHRA have discovered that 2/3s of the 138 unlicensed herbal products they tested contained prescription-only medications in a range of quantities.