Chapters
Black cohosh (Actaea racemosa, long filed as Cimicifuga racemosa) is widely sold for menopausal hot flushes, and in Australia every oral medicine containing it has to carry a liver warning. This film follows the Institute's draft monograph on the plant, which starts from a simple point: you can't judge a herb's effects or its safety until you know the capsule really holds it.
It covers the three things the monograph checks. First, identity: the rhizome by eye, then under the microscope, then by HPLC fingerprinting, plus the thin-layer chromatography screen for cimifugin, a marker of Asian Cimicifuga species that should never be in authentic material. A TGA survey found 35% of Australian products held other species. Second, the clinical record, graded low certainty, and the gap between the low-dose European extracts used in the trials and the much stronger liquid extracts used in Australian practice. Third, liver safety: why case reports are hard to assess, and Health Canada's finding that some products linked to liver injury held no black cohosh at all.
