Complementary Medicine

Its hidden risks

Complementary medicine (CM) is popular; 1-year prevalence figures range from 20% in the U.K. to 65% in Germany (1). Increasingly, CM options are being discussed as treatments for diabetes (2,3). The Chair of the U.S. White House Commission on CM predicted that “within 5–10 years CM will be part of the care in every major hospital and clinic across the country” (4), and a U.S. ‘think tank’ estimated that “by 2010 at least two-thirds (of the US population) will be using one or more of the approaches we now consider complementary or alternative” (5). Such statements implicitly suggest that CM is safe. In fact, a recent report by the U.K. House of Lords’ Science and Technology Select Committee stated, “There is no doubt that CM therapies are very safe” (6). But how sure can we be that this is true?

Some forms of CM are clearly not totally devoid of risk: acupuncture, for instance, has caused deaths and other serious complications through infection and trauma; chiropractic treatment has done so through vertebral arterial dissection after upper spinal manipulation; and herbal medicines have caused serious complications through hepato- and nephrotoxicity as well as herb-drug interactions (7). Such events are almost certainly rare, but their exact incidence is unknown at present. Thus, they represent an unknown that needs …