Herb-Induced Liver Injury: A Global Concern

Chinese medicine and herb medicine though used to treat liver diseases are an important cause of liver injury. Many phytochemicals have the potential to injure the liver, some in a dose-related fashion and more often in an idiosyncratic fashion, meaning occurrence is uncommon to rare in the population using these treatments. As is the case with pharmaceuticals, the phytochemicals are usually tolerated despite either no or mild transient subclinical injury but rarely in some susceptible patients cause moderate to severe liver injury which is likely mediated by the adaptive immune system.