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Dangerous Placebo During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Series of Homoeopathic Arsenicum Album-Induced Liver Injury

Complementary and alternative medicines were promoted as health supplements, “immune-boosters” and COVID-19 preventive drugs through visual, print, and social media, during the pandemic. In this context, specifically in India, the homeopathic remedy, Arsenicum Album 30C prepared from arsenic trioxid...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Theruvath, Arif H, Raveendran, Resmi, Philips, Cyriac A
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cureus 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9209406/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35747116
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.26062
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author Theruvath, Arif H
Raveendran, Resmi
Philips, Cyriac A
author_facet Theruvath, Arif H
Raveendran, Resmi
Philips, Cyriac A
author_sort Theruvath, Arif H
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description Complementary and alternative medicines were promoted as health supplements, “immune-boosters” and COVID-19 preventive drugs through visual, print, and social media, during the pandemic. In this context, specifically in India, the homeopathic remedy, Arsenicum Album 30C prepared from arsenic trioxide was widely prescribed and publicly supplied through government agencies among adults and school-going children. Inorganic arsenic, known as the “king of poisons” is a highly toxic substance with the potential to cause acute as well as chronic injury to multiple organ systems, mainly skin, lung, liver, and kidneys. Acute liver injury due to arsenic-containing formulations is seldom reported. We present three cases of acute liver injury, leading to death in one patient with underlying non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) cirrhosis, after consumption of the homeopathic remedy AA30 for COVID-19 prevention.
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spelling pubmed-92094062022-06-22 Dangerous Placebo During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Series of Homoeopathic Arsenicum Album-Induced Liver Injury Theruvath, Arif H Raveendran, Resmi Philips, Cyriac A Cureus Internal Medicine Complementary and alternative medicines were promoted as health supplements, “immune-boosters” and COVID-19 preventive drugs through visual, print, and social media, during the pandemic. In this context, specifically in India, the homeopathic remedy, Arsenicum Album 30C prepared from arsenic trioxide was widely prescribed and publicly supplied through government agencies among adults and school-going children. Inorganic arsenic, known as the “king of poisons” is a highly toxic substance with the potential to cause acute as well as chronic injury to multiple organ systems, mainly skin, lung, liver, and kidneys. Acute liver injury due to arsenic-containing formulations is seldom reported. We present three cases of acute liver injury, leading to death in one patient with underlying non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) cirrhosis, after consumption of the homeopathic remedy AA30 for COVID-19 prevention. Cureus 2022-06-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9209406/ /pubmed/35747116 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.26062 Text en Copyright © 2022, Theruvath et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Internal Medicine
Theruvath, Arif H
Raveendran, Resmi
Philips, Cyriac A
Dangerous Placebo During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Series of Homoeopathic Arsenicum Album-Induced Liver Injury
title Dangerous Placebo During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Series of Homoeopathic Arsenicum Album-Induced Liver Injury
title_full Dangerous Placebo During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Series of Homoeopathic Arsenicum Album-Induced Liver Injury
title_fullStr Dangerous Placebo During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Series of Homoeopathic Arsenicum Album-Induced Liver Injury
title_full_unstemmed Dangerous Placebo During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Series of Homoeopathic Arsenicum Album-Induced Liver Injury
title_short Dangerous Placebo During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Series of Homoeopathic Arsenicum Album-Induced Liver Injury
title_sort dangerous placebo during the covid-19 pandemic: a series of homoeopathic arsenicum album-induced liver injury
topic Internal Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9209406/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35747116
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.26062
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