Plume poppy

The most authoritative safety assessment of this plant, though conducted for animal feed rather than human medicine. The additive is standardised to 1.25 percent total sanguinarine, chelerythrine, protopine and allocryptopine, of which 0.5 percent is sanguinarine. The panel found no safety concern for the target animals at 0.750 mg sanguinarine per kg complete feed, but could not conclude on consumer safety in any consumer category because estimated exposure to sanguinarine and chelerythrine exceeds the threshold of toxicological concern of 0.0025 micrograms/kg body weight per day that applies to DNA-reactive mutagens and carcinogens. The additive was an eye irritant, not a skin irritant or sensitiser, and respiratory sensitisation could not be excluded. Read this against the manufacturer-side rodent battery below: the two reach materially different conclusions about the same alkaloids.

A rodent toxicology package on an extract containing at least 40 percent sanguinarine and at least 20 percent chelerythrine. Acute oral LD50 was 1564.55 mg/kg in Sprague-Dawley rats and 1024.33 mg/kg in ICR mice. No-observed-adverse-effect levels were 156.46 mg/kg at 90 days and 78.23 mg/kg at 180 days, in both cases the highest dose tested rather than a level at which effects appeared. The genotoxicity battery, comprising Ames, bone marrow micronucleus, sperm abnormality and rat teratogenicity, was negative throughout, and the authors concluded the extract lacked mutagenicity and teratogenicity. This conclusion is in direct tension with the EFSA position and with human epidemic dropsy data, and the study comes from the group associated with commercial development of the extract; weigh it accordingly.

Human evidence on the principal alkaloid of this plant, though the exposure came from Argemone mexicana oil adulterating mustard oil rather than from Macleaya. DNA damage measured in epidemic dropsy patients was correlated with the carcinogenic potential of argemone oil and of isolated sanguinarine in mice. This is the study that makes it hard to dismiss sanguinarine genotoxicity as a purely theoretical regulatory concern, and it is the reason the negative rodent battery above should not be read as reassurance for human internal use.

Bioactivity-guided toxicity evaluation of protopine, one of the minor alkaloids of this species. Necropsy of protopine-treated mice showed haemorrhage in the respiratory system, lung congestion, and haemorrhage and oedema in heart, liver, kidney and brain. Establishes that the toxicity of this plant is not confined to its two benzophenanthridines.

Alkaloids from the fruits, a natural sanguinarine and chelerythrine combination at roughly a 2 to 1 ratio, were molluscicidal against Oncomelania hupensis, the snail vector of schistosomiasis, with the physiological mechanism traced to action on the sodium-potassium ATPase pump. Relevant here for two reasons: it identifies the target that underlies the theoretical cardiac glycoside overlap, and it is the plant's most credible public health application, which is environmental rather than therapeutic.

Sanguinarine isolated from this species inhibited Candida albicans by blocking ergosterol synthesis. Supports the traditional topical use against fungal skin complaints, but is a laboratory study on an isolated alkaloid with no clinical arm.