Study: St. John's Wort Can Cause Dangerous Interactions with Many Common Medications

01 Jul 2014 --- St. John's wort is the most frequently used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatment in the U.S. for depression and similar psychiatric disorders. The many commonly prescribed medications that St. John's wort can interact with-sometimes with serious consequences such as serotonin syndrome or heart disease-are reviewed in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

The article is available free on The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine website.

In the article "Use of St. John's Wort in Potentially Dangerous Combinations," Scott Davis, Steven Feldman, MD, PhD, and Sarah Taylor, MD, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, NC, present the results of a large-scale search of a national medical database across 17 years to assess how often St. John's wort is prescribed and taken with other medications that may result in adverse reactions, such as oral contraceptives, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), blood thinners, chemotherapy medicines, digoxin, statins, immunosuppressants, or HIV medicines, for example.

Bibliographic Information: Use of St. John's Wort in Potentially Dangerous Combinations Scott A. Davis, Steven R. Feldman, Sarah L. Taylor. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. doi:10.1089/acm.2013.0216.