Dear Reader
All of us at BAPP, including the American Botanical Council (ABC), the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia (AHP), and the National Center for Natural Products Research (NCNPR) at the University of Mississippi, hope that you, your family, friends, and co-workers are safe. These are certainly difficult times for all of those who work in the fields of growing, processing, manufacturing, and marketing of herbal medicinal ingredients. The outbreak of COVID-19 has impacted the botanical industry in many ways, most importantly by demanding new approaches to keep employees safe while attempting to avoid disruptions of the botanical supply chain and product manufacturing. Another issue is the shortage of many supplies, from herbal ingredients, excipients, and packaging all the way to cleaning products and office supplies. Supply shortages are one of the factors that lead to an increase in attempts to sell materials which are diluted or substituted with undisclosed lower-cost ingredients – i.e., adulteration. In order to keep you informed, we are closely monitoring the situation, particularly with regard to those herbal ingredients which are currently in high demand, e.g., those with immunomodulating or antimicrobial activities, to see if there are reports of adulteration.
In the first three months of this year, the ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP) has published two new peer-reviewed documents: the olive (Olea europaea) oil bulletin and the turmeric (Curcuma longa) laboratory guidance document. We hope that the information provided in the two documents will be of use to those involved in purchasing or quality control of herbal dietary ingredients.
The Regulatory Update section draws attention to the unfortunate sale of adulterated turmeric roots and rhizomes and tea (Camellia sinensis) leaves in Pakistan and India, respectively. In both cases, the targeted buyers are local restaurants, tea shops, or bakeries that may not have the necessary means or expertise to perform a thorough quality control assessment. While these cases seem to be limited to local shops, it cannot be excluded that more sophisticated ways to adulterate are used with turmeric roots/rhizomes or tea leaves destined for export to Western countries.
The Science Update section starts with the review of the supply chain and analytical sections of the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia’s boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) monograph. The monograph has a short section on potential substituents and adulterants, which mainly include other Eupatorium spp. and Eutrochium purpureum. The robust section on taxonomic, macroscopic, microscopic, and chemical analysis explains how boneset can be distinguished from its potential confounding species. If you are not familiar with our BAPP partner AHP and their high-quality monographs, I strongly encourage you to access them, utilize their excellent resources, and support them.
A large-scale investigation into the authenticity of 103 samples from 70 manufacturers in India purported to be ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) root has been published by Nagendraprasad et al. The scientists used DNA barcoding with Sanger sequencing to determine the authenticity of the samples. Velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens) and fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) were among the substitutes identified by this method
The third paper in the section describes a combination of proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) spectrometry and high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) to assess the quality of 50 commercial turmeric dietary supplement products obtained mainly from pharmacies in the United Kingdom. The results point to substantial differences in the quality of the dietary supplements. At least three samples were thought to contain synthetic curcumin.
The final two papers provide quantitative data on the triterpene contents in dietary supplements labeled to contain boswellia (Boswellia serrata or other Boswellia spp.). Miscioscia et al. analyzed 13 supplements purchased from the US consumer retail channel, while Schmiech et al., investigated the contents of 8 triterpenes in 15 European and one US dietary supplements. In both cases, the authors found products with very low boswellic acid content, as well as products that were highly enriched in 3-O-acetyl-11-keto-β-boswellic acid. Interestingly, the data from the European products suggest that two products labeled to contain oleoresin from B. sacra and B. carterii, respectively, were actually made with B. serrata. Both research groups published the results together with the dietary supplement brand names, thus providing some insight into the product quality of different manufacturers.
We hope that the information included in this issue of the Botanical Adulterants Monitor will be useful to you. By increasing the awareness of botanical ingredient adulteration and presenting new techniques to detect adulteration, we aim to help prevent adulterated ingredients from finding their way into the herbal dietary supplement, natural cosmetic, personal care, and other finished botanical products supply chains. We encourage you to please share the contents of this newsletter with your colleagues.
Stefan Gafner, PhD
Chief Science Officer
American Botanical Council
Technical Director, ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Program
