Investigating Contamination of Phytotherapy Products for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia With α-Blockers and 5α-Reductase Inhibitors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: Complementary and alternative medicine, including phytotherapeutic agents, or those derived from plant or herb extracts to treat symptoms, is widely accepted in the community. Men with bothersome lower urinary tract symptoms due to benign prostatic hyperplasia increasingly use such preparations. Phytotherapeutic agent quality is unregulated and in most instances the contents are unknown while erectile dysfunction and prostate cancer treatments have shown contamination with standard pharmaceuticals. Since trial results for benign prostatic hyperplasia phytotherapeutic agents are inconsistent, they may also be contaminated. Thus, we determined whether pharmacological doses of alpha-blockers and/or 5alpha-reductase inhibitors were present in a sample of phytotherapeutic agents for benign prostatic hyperplasia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed 15 phytotherapeutic products marketed for benign prostatic hyperplasia. Only oral tablets or capsules were considered with teas, tonics and foods excluded from study. We made random purchases from shop front health stores and Internet retailers. All batches of commercial phytotherapy were analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography. Analysis was semiquantitative using extracts from alfuzosin, doxazosin, terazosin, tamsulosin, dutasteride and finasteride. RESULTS: In the 15 batches of different phytotherapeutic agents tested no interference secondary to contamination with alpha-blockers or 5alpha-reductase inhibitors was observed. CONCLUSIONS: All phytotherapeutic agents for benign prostatic hyperplasia in this study tested negative for alpha-blockers and 5alpha-reductase inhibitors. Inconsistent results in trials using phytotherapeutic agents are probably not explained by the presence of standard pharmaceuticals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".