New Bulletins Highlight Grapefruit
Seed Extract, St. John’s Wort and Saw Palmetto Adulteration Issues
The sale of synthetic antimicrobial compounds labeled as grapefruit (Citrus paradisi) seed extract (GFSE), first reported in
1991, has been reviewed and summarized in a full paper in HerbalGram
in 2012. Written by John Cardellina, PhD, the GFSE Bulletin builds on this
earlier paper, including data from three additional publications confirming
this adulteration issue. The Bulletin also includes production and market data,
a short review on analytical methods to detect GFSE adulteration, and an
updated section regarding safety concerns when unknowingly ingesting the
synthetic microbicides.
The St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum,
Hypericaceae) Bulletin, written by Allison McCutcheon, PhD, explains past and
current issues of St. John’s wort adulteration. The unintentional collection of
closely-related Hypericum species instead of
authentic St. John’s wort has been described as early as the 1980s. More
recently, adulteration with Asian species of Hypericum
and the addition of food dyes to extracts with the aim to fool the standard
laboratory tests (spectrophotometric determination of total hypericins) in
order to comply with the labeled contents (usually 0.3%) have been documented. In
addition to the known adulterants, the Bulletin also provides information on
the growing range, production, and market importance of St. John’s wort and its
extracts, potential therapeutic and/or safety issues with the adulterating
species, and analytical approaches to detect adulterants.
The saw palmetto Bulletin was co-authored by Scott Baggett, PhD,
consultant for analytical methods to the natural products industry, and Stefan
Gafner, PhD, ABC chief science officer and Botanical Adulterants Program
technical director. Reports of the addition of undeclared vegetable oils, e.g.,
palm oil, canola oil or coconut oil, to saw palmetto extracts for financial
gain, have appeared since the early 2000s. Since these vegetable oils contain
some of the same components as ripe saw palmetto berries, the detection of
adulteration is not always straightforward. Even more difficult is the
determination of the proper amount of saw palmetto in a finished product, since
vegetable oils are almost always added (and usually declared on the label) as
part of the semi-liquid formulation of the saw palmetto extract, e.g., in
softgel capsules. Unscrupulous suppliers have taken advantage of these
analytical challenges to pass vegetable oils as saw palmetto extracts entirely
and/or to dilute saw palmetto extracts with the lower-cost vegetable oils.
Besides information on production, supply sources, and market importance of saw
palmetto and its extracts, the Bulletin provides information about known
adulterants and analytical approaches to detect adulterants.
As all other Botanical
Adulterants Program’s publications are, the grapefruit seed extract, St. John’s wort, and saw palmetto Bulletins are available to registered users
free of charge on the Botanical Adulterants Program website, found on the ABC
website.
