FDA urged to ban ephedrine from dietary supplements

Ephedrine alkaloid dietary supplements are associated with more reports of death, myocardial infarction, cardiac arrhythmia, hypertension, stroke, and seizure than all other dietary supplements combined, Dr Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, a Washington based consumer watchdog, told a US Senate committee earlier this month. The committee was taking evidence on the dangers of the herb ephedra. Last January Dr Wolfe, in a letter to the American Medical Association, asked for the association's support in urging the Food and Drug Administration to …