Is it really the "dark side" of herbal medicine?

• 来源期刊: 中国科学（生命科学）
• 年，卷（期）: 2018,（9）
• 页码范围: 1118-1119
• 页数: 2页
• 语种: 中文

摘要

Aristolochic acids (AAs),previously rarely mentioned compounds,have been brought into the public eye several times since the beginning of this century;and currently,they have drawn even greater attention due to their association with liver cancer,as was recently reported by Ng et al.(Ng et al.,2017).The authors sequenced the whole exomes of 98 patients with hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC) from Taiwan and reported that 78％ of the cases carried the AAs mutational signature,A:T＞T:A transversion.Further examination of publicly available data from Chinese patients with HCC detected the same signature in 47％ of the cases.The importance of the article is unquestionable;however,it must be pointed out that this study only suggested a CORRELATION between AAs exposure and the AAs-induced mutational signature that may indicate contribution to the incidence of HCC,rather than identified AAs as CAUSATIVE carcinogens for HCC.