Archived Articles: 02-26-2001

Echinacea: Might Be Safe in Pregnancy

Most drugs carry the following warning: "safety in pregnancy has not been established." This bit of boilerplate does not necessarily mean that the drug in question has been proven dangerous for pregnant women. Rather, it might just indicate that the manufacturer has not proven it safe. Considering past disasters like thalidomide, physicians, manufacturers, and the FDA would rather be safe than sorry.

Few herbs have been proven safe in pregnancy either. While some are known to be harmful (such as comfrey, blue cohosh and pennyroyal), for the great majority of herbs no evidence exists one way or another.

The main problem with evaluating the safety of either drugs or herbs during pregnancy is that studies could put women and their unborn children at risk. Researchers can test treatments on pregnant animals, but sometimes humans respond differently than rats, guinea pigs and mice.

Another option is to observe women who have already decided to use a certain drug or herb while pregnant, and compare them to similar women who did not. A recent study used this technique to evaluate the safety of echinacea.

In this trial, a total of 206 pregnant women using echinacea were enrolled, and followed through childbirth.1 They were compared against 206 other pregnant women who were not using echinacea.

The results were heartening. The rate of birth defects, miscarriage and premature birth were statistically identical between groups, and there was no difference in the course of labor and delivery, and the health and weight of the infants.

These results accord well with animal studies that have found echinacea essentially non-toxic.2 Nonetheless, this was a relatively small study, and couldn't possibly discover relatively rare complications of echinacea use. Therefore, we must conclude this article by saying once more: the safety of echinacea in pregnancy has not been proven.

1. Gallo M, Sarkar M, Au W, et al. Pregnancy outcome following gestational exposure to echinacea: a prospective controlled study. Arch Intern

Med. 2000;160:3141–3143.

2. Mengs U, Clare CB, Poiley JA. Toxicity of echinacea purpurea: Acute, subacute and genotoxicity studies. Arzneimittelforschung.

1991;41:1076–1081.

From www.tnp.com