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Before embarking on treatment with Chinese herbal medicine, I ask all my patients to take a Liver Function Test. This is a simple test in which a finger is pricked to yield a very small amount of blood which is transferred via a capillary tube to a special test strip. The test strip is then analysed in the clinic's Reflotron Plus machine, an on-the-spot diagnostics system. The whole test takes less than 5 minutes to complete, and the results are available immediately.
These Liver Function tests are done to ensure patient safety. They measure the levels of ALT (alanine aminotransferase - previously known as glutamic-pyruvic transaminase or GPT). The ALT parameter was chosen because most authorities agree that, along with alklaline phosphatase, it gives the best indication of how the liver is coping with metabolising medication (Al-Khafaji, 2000).
The initial test establishes the baseline reading, and future tests conducted at regular intervals throughout the course of treatment, are designed to ensure that any adverse reactions are detected early and steps can then be taken to mitigate these. I should stress here that my experience to date suggests that elevation in ALT levels during treatment is very rare indeed. So far, I have been conducting tests on my herbal patients for a year now and in only 2 cases have the ALT readings given cause for concern. In both of these cases the readings were already elevated before treatment began.*
Each Liver Function Test costs £12. Kidney function and cholesterol tests are also available.
* Note for those interested in statistics. My admittedly limited experience in the ALT testing arena mirrors the results reported by Al-Khafaji (2000) who, having amassed data on 1,265 patients over a period of 33 months, found that only 8.46% of patients developed raised ALT readings during treatment and in 95.9% of these, the levels returned to normal. Only 9.4% of those who developed raised ALT with treatment (0.79% of the patients in the total ample) had readings that were 3 x above the normal limit. 80% of these were almost certainly due to other factors - primarily other medication they had taken in the days leading to the blood test.
Reference
Al-Khafaji, M. (2000) 'Monitoring of Liver Enzymes in Patients on Chinese Medicine' In Journal of Chinese Medicine No. 62 February 2000; pp 6-10