If the novel coronavirus persists, the search for a cure remains inevitable. However, there is no shortage of proponents of unproven remedies.
Now doctors are complaining the latest headlines that oleandrin – a potentially toxic chemical – is being shoved by a business leader with ties to the White House. The chemical, extract from the Oleander plant, was quickly returned by experts as dangerous and potentially fatal.
“This is not a friendly plant … do not go near this plant,” said Matthew Heinz, MD, an Arizona-based inpatient physician currently caring for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
If you accidentally ingest even small amounts of oleandrin you can kill, explained Heinz, who spent time in a poisoning center and felt conversations about oleandrin poisoning as part of his medical education.
The plant extract was promoted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who told Axios that he discussed the use of oleandrin as a treatment for COVID-19 during an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, HUD Secretary Dr Ben Carson, Staff Chief of the White House Mark Meadows, and Andrew Whitney of Phoenix Biotechnology, who is interested in selling the product.
On Tuesday, Trump confirmed that the use of oleander for the treatment of COVID-19 was discussed at the White House, stating, “We will look into it.”
The FDA declined to comment, ABC News reported, “By policy, the FDA does not respond to, confirm or deny potential product applications.”
Although a recent study from the University of Texas showed that the plant extract could kill the virus in lab dishes, experts say that laboratories provide almost no information on the question of whether the extract is safe and effective in humans. For that, scientists would first have to do much more extensive studies on animals, then on humans. The UT study was not published in a scientific journal and was also not reviewed through peer review.
“Humans are not test tubes,” said William Schaffner MD, professor of preventive medicine and infectious disease at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who said oleandrine is a potent poison that is highly toxic to the heart and can cause dangerous abnormal heart rhythms.
“What happens in red tubes is one thing, what happens in humans is another,” Schaffner said. “We’ve been off this road before.”
The “way forward” is in reference to preliminary laboratory studies on hydroxychloroquine, which showed promise as a COVID-19 treatment in the lab, but was not unpacked as rigorous testing in humans.
Experts equally doubt that further tests on oleandrin would unfold.
“It’s very simple … it annoys nature, but it also kills,” said Cassandra Quave, Ph.D., medical ethnobotanist, curator of the Emory University herbarium and assistant professor of dermatology at Emory University. “We did not study [oleandrin] in drug discovery research applications because of its level of toxicity. “
“It’s important to research and research plants as medicines, but we also have to be very careful about which plants we promote to the public. In this particular example … it can prove very fatal,” she said.
Plants as medicine is not a new concept, and many common medications today are derived from plants, including aspirin, which is derived from willow bark, and codeine, which is derived from the opium doll.
Some plant-based medications can also be very toxic when taken in their natural forms; for example, foxglove, a highly toxic plant with similarities to oilseeds, is used to make digoxin with heart failure. That although we have medicinal uses for known poisonous plants, the process of medicine production is a long end – generally takes many years.
“We need to remember: safety first,” said Todd Ellerin, MD, director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health. “And until something has a proven safety record, we can not even think about whether something can be effective or not. We can not sideline science.”
With doctors and scientists firmly claiming oil as a COVID-19 treatment pauses until further information comes to light, the race for the breakthrough that ends the global pandemic continues.
Nancy A. Anoruo, MD, MPH, is an Internal Medicine physician, public health scientist and contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
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