Herbal remedies could be reducing effectiveness of life-saving cancer treatments

Cancer patients taking herbal remedies to help fight the disease or curtail treatment side-effects may unwittingly reduce the effectiveness of radiotherapy or chemotherapy.

Dr Conleth Murphy, consultant medical oncologist at Bon Secours Hospital in Cork, said alternative therapies posed “potential harm” because patients tended to regard them as “a natural product rather than a drug”.

However herbal remedies had to be eliminated from the body through the liver in the same manner as conventional medicine and because they “compete for the liver’s attention with other drugs”, they could “potentially slow down the elimination of conventional cancer drugs which may increase side effects”, Dr Murphy said.