What supplements to be wary of as drug-induced liver injuries rise in the U.S.

From 1995 through 2020, supplement-related liver failure requiring U.S. patients to be waitlisted for transplants increased eightfold, according to a study.

It started with nausea and loss of appetite.

Robert Grafton, of Turnersville, New Jersey, tried to convince himself he was just coming down with something one weekend in mid-March. Then came the itching and dark urine. Grafton, a former interventional radiology technologist whose wife is a nurse, recognized the hallmarks of liver failure.

The otherwise healthy 54-year-old had a gut feeling that his herbal and dietary supplements were the culprit.

“I stopped taking everything, thank goodness,” Grafton said. “If I hadn’t known, if I was not in the medical field, I might have thought, ‘Oh, I think I’m getting sick. I need to take some more of these supplements to help me feel better.’”

When his symptoms had only worsened by midweek, Grafton visited his primary care physician. The doctor, he said, suspected hepatitis A, a liver infection that can be caused by consuming food or drink contaminated with the hepatitis A virus. Grafton’s laboratory test results showed otherwise.