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Ephedrine Health Effects
The recently updated review of FDA's Center for Food Safety
and Applied Nutrition's (CFSAN) Special Nutritionals Adverse
Event Monitoring System (SN/AEMS), including data collected
from January 1993 until February 2001, shows that ephedrine
alkaloid dietary supplements are associated with more reports
of deaths, myocardial infarctions, cardiac arrhythmias, hypertension,
stroke and seizure events than all other dietary supplements
combined.
According to the FDA analysis, during this interval there
were:
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3308 adverse events for all dietary supplements, 1398
of these (42%) for the ephedrine alkaloids
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137 reports of death, 81 deaths (59%) associated with
ephedrine alkaloids
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38 reports of myocardial infarction/heart attack, 32
reports (84%) associated with ephedrine alkaloids
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98 reports of cardiac arrhythmias, 62 (63%) associated
with ephedrine alkaloids
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144 reports of hypertension, 91 (63%) associated with
ephedrine alkaloids
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85 reports of stroke, 69 (81%) associated with ephedrine
alkaloids
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121 reports of seizure, 70 (58%) associated with ephedrine
alkaloids
Ephedrine Warnings
Two earlier FDA-commissioned reviews of a much smaller number
of adverse events reported to the FDA involving the use of
ephedrine alkaloids (did not include data from 2000 and 2001)
confirmed the cardiac toxicity of these chemicals. The first
study found that 47% of cases involved the cardiovascular
system (17 cases of hypertension, 13 with palpitations or
fast heartbeat, 10 strokes). There were also 7 reports of
seizures. The second study found that of the 104 reports in
which causation by ephedrine alkaloids was very likely, there
were 10 cases of sudden death, 9 cardiac arrhythmias, another
23 possible arrhythmic events, 3 heart attacks, 10 cases of
chest pain and 15 severe strokes
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