The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7311 p176
7 August 2004

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Pharmacists should keep their knowledge of herbal remedies and complementary medicines up to date

Community pharmacists should be aware of which complementary or herbal medicines they stock and make sure they know the essential information about these products, according to Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Peninsula medical school, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth. He said: “If pharmacists do not feel confident that they have this knowledge they should acquire it.”

Professor Ernst was speaking to The Journal following a briefing in London this week at which he discussed some of his recent research into complementary medicines. One of the topics discussed at the briefing was the standard of information provided to people with cancer via the internet. Professor Ernst had analysed 32 websites most likely to be used by cancer patients and found that nearly all of the sites endorsed or recommended alternative medicines for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, 16 per cent of the sites discouraged patients from using conventional cancer treatment and 3 per cent discouraged patients from adhering to clinician’s advice. Three websites had the potential for harming patients (Annals of Oncology 2004;15:733).

Professor Ernst told The Journal: “The pharmacist is in a unique position to provide reliable evidence to these patients, certainly more reliable than these promotional websites. It would be well worth considering training pharmacists adequately to provide this advice.”

He pointed out that this particular study only analysed cancer websites and that there are also some excellent websites to which patients should be guided.

At the briefing Professor Ernst also highlighted another of his recent studies which showed that 8.8 per cent of 1,360 patients taking warfarin were taking at least one herbal remedy thought to interact with the drug, and that 92.2 per cent of these patients had not discussed taking complementary medicines with a conventional health care professional (PJ, 26 June, p796).


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