Let's collect kava research

[kavadude]

Searching on the internet for research can be kind of a pain in the butt, especially for those of us without access to research databases.

I think we should start a wiki page cataloging any kava or kava-related (kavalactone) studies and organize it to be easy to follow. Along with linking to the full text of the article if possible. I started here with a study I was looking at. Please add them as you come across them.

http://www.kavaforums.com/forum/wiki/research-links/

Start here when searching for articles, these all have full text available without asking you to pay $xxx or whatever dollars to read government-funded research.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/

 

[infraredz]

I'll try to collect as much info from my university as possible.

There's a lot of redundancy though, especially when it comes to hepatotoxicity.

 

[kavadude]

It's unfortunate, but anyone who wants to use kava for anxiogenic, anticancer, what have you purposes must also address the liver toxicity issue. Hopefully someone (Lebot) will figure it out soon.

 

[infraredz]

There's just a tremendous amount of that info to sift through, so that's what makes specific, unbiased studies all the more important. I hope that more in the scientific community will start to address it, because it is something that holds some weight.

For instance, it is extremely clear that kava places a very heavy load on the liver, just by the fact that it inhibits so many enzymes and does so very strongly. That's pretty clear evidence of something that could cause hepatotoxicity, or at least drug interactions.

 

[kavadude]

Definitely. There's so much research out there, but none of it actually comes out and says "this is the cause (or causes) or kava-related liver damage." There's some conflicting information out there as well. It seems that the "pacific paradox" theory is out -- since Pacific islanders have presented with kava-related liver damage, but none of the information I can find goes into depth about whether there might be comorbid issues (alcohol use, hepatitis). More recent research seems to focus on toxic mold spore contamination, but that seems difficult to prove.

 

[Andrew Procyk]

To my understanding, there has not been a single study in a peer-reviewed journal in the past decade that concludes any sort of hepatotoxic properties of kava itslef. (Kava being defined as: the water-based extract of subground portions of noble [drinking] varieties of Piper wichmannii var: methysticum. [A definition that Lebot supports, and there is a move to get it registered as a safe food) GRAS - Generally Regarded as Safe in FDA-speak. He uses the example often: if you extract caffeine out of coffee beans, and put them in a pill, you can't call it coffee. If you are taking other drugs or organic contaminants, that could be another story, but drinking noble kava appears to be harmless, at least on the surface.

 

[kavadude]

Liver problems haven't really been reproduced with traditional aqueous extracts as far as I'm aware, which is why I'm not really concerned about it. But it's unfortunately part of kava's reputation and something I would really like to be resolved once and for all by research.

 

[Vekta]

From what I read about it some researchers think those instances where they have seen evidence of liver damage where due to bacterial contamination from kava grown in substandard or polluted soil. From what I remember they didn't actually do any research on that. It was more of a "well this is most likely it since "such and such" wasn't the case". I missed the mold spore idea but I saw more than a few lines talking about environmental pollution being a factor where it grows. Sad thought...stop screwin up the planet humans! *beats them with tree branch*

 

[infraredz]

I've only found the same thing Vekta has. A wildly fallacious article called "Kava hepatotoxicity in traditional and modern use: the presumed Pacific kava paradox hypothesis revisited"
Full text here

It cites this article as the basis for it's claim that non water extracts can also hepatotoxic: (this is, I think, the only study analyzing possible contaminants in the actual aqueous extracts) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19843208, among others.

It goes on to identify data confirming contamination by Aspergillus species that produce mycotoxins such as ochratoxin A and alfatoxins and says that they are "potentially toxic to the human liver in analogy with hepatitis caused by food contaminated with alfatoxins" reported from other countries.

That being said, I have yet to see conclusive evidence that hepatotoxic substances occur in the root.

However, I think it's important to have a significant amount of scrutiny of the kava we get (or, our suppliers get). It's my understanding that they have to pass an FDA screen, but I don't know what that includes and doesn't include. All I know is that it's a pass or fail. No GC/MS analysis is available as far as I'm aware of. Maybe our suppliers can give more insight.