Chinese diet pills, available on the Irish market, have been banned by the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) nd a warning issued to the public.
The tablets with the label “2 Day Diet” have been found to contain an active ingredient called sibutramine, which is a prescription-controlled medicine used as part of weight-loss treatments.
The Medicines Board has issued a warning to the general public, along with traditional Chinese medicine practitioners and suppliers and retailers of traditional Chinese medical products, about the pills.
The pills come in a plastic tub, which features white text on a red and white label. The pill bottle has a mushroom graphic and the words “slimming formula”, “fat burner”, “expelling of toxin” and “relieving constipation”.
The bottle, with a screw-off security lid, contains roughly 60 purple capsules with no distinguishing markings.
It says the ingredients include “Ling Zhi, Ebony, Fox Nut, Tuckahoe, Seman Pruni, Dioscoreae, Wheat Germ and Nature Substance”.
A review of clinical trials of Chinese herbal medicines, widely used in Asia to treat the early stages of diabetes, has found some may help prevent the development of the disease but more research is needed to establish their efficacy.
Researchers from the Centre for Complementary Medicine (CompleMED) at the University of Western Sydney, and colleagues, focused on treatments for 'pre-diabetes' which is characterised by raised blood sugar levels not yet high enough to cause overt symptoms.
"There is ample anecdotal evidence for the safety and effectiveness of many Chinese herbal treatments for pre-diabetes. However, we really need more scientific research before we can confidently say that these treatments work," says Suzanne Grant, from CompleMED and the lead author on the study.
Ms Grant's study of 16 clinical trials, including 1391 people who received 15 different herbal formulations, has been published in the latest Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
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