“Healing” supplements containing a strong carcinogen were found on Russian shelves

More than 15 years ago, products based on the kirkazona plant (Chinese vine) were recognized as carcinogens. However, they are still sold all over the world, including in Russia.

And if in many countries they try to hide Kirkazon as part of “potions”, in Russia this is considered unnecessary: ​​today the carcinogen, which causes severe kidney pathologies, is widely represented in mass markets in the form of medicinal supplements, including for weight loss.

Chinese liana is one of the popular plants in Russian summer cottages, although scientific data suggests that even growing this crop is dangerous because it contaminates the soil, and therefore other plants, with hazardous substances.

In addition to obvious poisons, plants also contain unobvious poisons with a delayed effect. Like, for example, kirkazone, which for a couple of millennia was considered a medicine. The first mentions of it are found among ancient Greek philosophers. In different countries it was used to solve various problems: the treatment of gastritis and diarrhea, parasites and infections, syphilis and gonorrhea, obstetrics and even termination of pregnancy. In Africa, poisoning and snake bites were treated with extracts from plants of the Kirkazonaceae family, and in Europe, skin diseases, including eczema, abscesses, and fungal infections.

However, in recent years, research has shown a toxic effect of kirkazone extracts (this explains their antibacterial and antifungal properties). But the therapeutic effects have not been proven. But the real sensation was the discovery of scientists who proved the carcinogenic effect of Kirkazone. The first warning signs about the dangers of these traditional remedies arose 25 years ago. In 2013, the journal “Chemistry and Life” published a publication that talked about several emergency situations around the world. Thus, in the late 1990s in Belgium, mass appeals of young women with severe kidney pathologies were registered (which later developed into terminal renal failure or cancer in many). There were more than three hundred cases, and about a third of the cases required a kidney transplant. It turned out that all the ladies visited the same spa in Brussels and underwent a course of weight loss using Chinese herbal preparations. Aristolochic acids, substances that cause the destruction of kidney tissue and cause cancer, found in the Chinese vine Aristolochia, were found in weight loss pills. The toxin turned out to be extremely insidious: with a long latent period, after which the disease was diagnosed in an advanced stage. The disease was called “Chinese herbal nephropathy.”

A similar disease in Yugoslavia was called “Balkan endemic nephropathy.” It began to be registered back in the 50s of the last century – and for a long time they could not establish the cause of the fatal pathology (there is still no treatment for it). In 1967, a special WHO conference was even dedicated to the disease. Only at the beginning of the 21st century, American scientists established that its cause was the consequences of consuming substances contained in a plant of the kirkazona family, more precisely, clematis, Aristolochia clematitis (local name – cleft palate). The seeds of this bindweed accidentally fell into the grain and contaminated the flour, and the residents received poison from the bread. Scientists have found that aristolochic acid triggers destructive changes in the kidneys.

In a number of Asian countries, until recently, even doctors prescribed Kirkazon seeds, and in China, tens of tons of herbal potions based on Kirkazon were produced, which are included in drugs for weight loss, treatment of arthritis, headaches, problems with the genitourinary system, etc. But research in A study in Taiwan in 2011 showed that 60–84% of patients with urinary system cancer had aristolochian “tags” in the DNA of tumor cells, and in total traces of Kirkazone consumption remained in the kidneys of every third resident of Taiwan. Kirkazon turned out to be much more harmful than tobacco. As a result, Kirkazone was banned in Taiwan. It was later found that 78% of patients diagnosed with liver cancer in Taiwan consumed aristolochic acid. 47% of these were found in China and 13% in Korea.

“An epidemiological study in Taiwan (where the incidence of kidney and upper urinary tract cancers was the highest in Asia and where a third of the population consumed dietary supplements containing kirkasone) showed a clear association of kirkasone with a spectrum of mutations in cancer cells. Even then, it became clear that one of the cancer patients, in whom smoking was initially thought to be the cause of kidney cancer and who apparently did not use products containing kirkazone, also had a completely characteristic spectrum of mutations and also contained adducts of aristolochic acid and DNA in the urine. That is, aristolochic acid was sometimes contained in products whose labeling did not formally contain kirkazone plants,” says famous American geneticist Dmitry Pruss.

Experts note that lovers of Chinese medicine can use kirkazone without even knowing it: it’s just not declared in supplements today. “There is so much DNA damage in users of drugs with aristolochic acids that the number of mutations in tumors far exceeds even lung cancer cells from smokers and damage from ultraviolet radiation in skin cancer, and modified adenine, a product of binding to DNA, is easily detected in urine,” continues Dmitry Pruss.

Today, in the USA, EU and Russia, aristolochic acids are recognized as carcinogens and toxins, and their distribution in medicines is prohibited. “But analyzes of the mutation spectrum of kidney tumor cells continue to show the imprint of aristolochic acid in “ethnic minorities” who deny the use of folk remedies with kirkazone. Somewhere these vines continue to lurk unmarked. And, even more mysteriously, a similar, but not identical, signature of mutations is visible in the cancer cells of patients tactfully described as having a “complicated therapeutic history” with psychotropic drugs. These are different cancers – brain, intestinal, lung – and what kind of natural mutagen from what source could work here remains a mystery,” says the geneticist.

Despite the current ban, herbal preparations with Kirkazon or Kirkazon itself are quietly sold on Russian marketplaces. In the form of seeds (for the garden) and medicinal potions. For example, one of the sellers writes that Kirkazone has powerful healing properties and recommends using it externally to treat joints, muscle pain or skin problems, and internally for problems with the gastrointestinal tract. “Burning Kirkazon seeds produces medicinal smoke, inhaling which a patient with epilepsy receives significant improvement,” says the product description. For a package of dry grass they ask from 250 to 640 rubles.

Kirkazon plants are still popular not only in folk medicine, but also as decorative flowering vines. And many summer residents in Russia grow them on their plots. Meanwhile, it has been proven that aristolochic acid, entering the soil with litter, passes into other plants that cannot synthesize it. AK is also recognized as a carcinogen for the environment. Not only compost, but also groundwater is contaminated with acid. Therefore, growing such plants in plots is, to put it mildly, a dangerous undertaking. And summer residents note that even the most desperate pests like slugs will not eat the Chinese liana.