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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

> Article said that supplements that mix pepper and turmeric are dangerous.

The article made it up. It's pure speculation. Hundreds of thousands of people take pepper+curcumin supplements and are totally fine.

What's likely the culprit here is an idiosyncratic immune response, or a heavy metal contaminated supplement. Of course, that's also speculative. Could be something she ate; could be that she didn't disclose a drinking problem.

The article reads like it has an axe to grind, tbh. "Oh no an unregulated racket!"

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From the linked NIH page on drug-induced liver toxicity:

“Importantly, means of increasing the bioavailability of curcumin were developed using piperine (black pepper) or lipid nanoparticle delivery methods to increase absorption. These high bioavailability forms of purified curcumin were subsequently linked to several cases of liver injury and mentioned as a possible cause of outbreaks of acute hepatitis with jaundice in Italy.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548561/

So no, the article didn’t make it up. In fact, you made up the claim that they made it up. Seems like you are the one with an axe to grind.

Probably over a million people have taken curcumin+piperine supplements that they bought via Amazon.

See, e.g.: https://i.ibb.co/Qvbdjqf7/amazon-curcumin.png

My impression as an author with books on Amazon is that you get one review or rating for every 20-30 purchases, and there are two products with "200k people have purchased multiple times."

And that's to say nothing of people who have bought such products via other sources, like Wal-Mart, etc.

All that, and you have "several" cases? That's not a lot. You need much stronger evidence to support any assertion that the nature of the product is harmful. (As opposed to contamination or chance effects.) If anything, I'd say that purchase and utilization statistics support the notion that the product is not harmful.

Damage is usually done in aggregate. Leaded gasoline didn't have people dropping like flies, but still caused significant damage.

Although it seems this needs more research, I'd be wary dismissing it out of hand just because people haven't been having an acute reaction.

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