N.J. woman hospitalized with liver damage from turmeric supplement after seeing NBC News report

Katie Mohan started taking daily turmeric pills in March after seeing a doctor on Instagram tout its benefits for inflammation and joint pain relief.

A few weeks later, the 57-year-old started having stomach pain, nausea and fatigue. “I just did not feel well generally,” she said. “I also noticed that despite drinking a lot of water every day, that my urine was darker.”

Mohan didn’t connect her symptoms to the herbal pills. Not until she saw an NBC News report in May on the growing rates of liver damage from herbal supplements. “A light bulb went off in my head and I said, Oh, my gosh! I wonder if this is what’s wrong with me.”

She recognized her symptoms in the patient interviewed, Robert Grafton, who was also taking the same high dose of turmeric pills, 2,250 mg.

There are no clear guidelines in the United States about how much turmeric is safe to consume and turmeric pills are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. According to an evaluation by the World Health Organization, an acceptable daily dose is 0-3 mg per kilogram of body weight.

For a woman weighing 150 pounds, that would be about 200 mg of turmeric daily.

Mohan went to urgent care within a week of the NBC News report, where her blood work showed liver enzyme levels about 70 times the normal limit. She was admitted to a local New Jersey hospital and then transferred to NYU Langone in New York City.

“It was very serious,” said Dr. Nikolaos Pyrsopoulos, a hepatologist at NYU. “Katie actually was one step before full liver damage, liver failure, requiring liver transplant.”

Mohan was hospitalized for six days and after close monitoring and treatment with an IV medication, her liver was able to regenerate.

Pyrsopoulos, who is monitoring Mohan’s recovery, said he has seen an increase in liver injuries caused by supplements, though they are still rare. Turmeric, which is promoted as a way to reduce inflammation in the body and treat osteoarthritis, is one of the most common herbal ingredients that have been linked to toxic hepatitis in the U.S., according to a study published last year in JAMA Network Open.

From 1995-2020, supplement-related liver failure requiring transplant increased eightfold in the U.S, according to a study in the journal Liver Transplantation. A review in the journal Hepatology found that 20% of liver toxicity cases are tied to herbal and dietary supplements.

“Natural does not mean safe,” said Dr. Dina Halegoua-De Marzio, a hepatologist at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia. “When you cook with turmeric, that could be really safe. But some of the supplements now are 2,000 mg-plus, which is a very high dose of turmeric,” she said. Coupled with black pepper, “the liver now has to break down that supplement and it can’t. It could make it really sick.”

Halegoua is part of the Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network, a research group backed by the National Institutes of Health trying to track cases of supplement-induced liver damage. The program has enrolled more than 1,800 patients since 2004, with 19% of cases linked to supplements. According to the network, liver injuries tied to turmeric have increased significantly.

Mohan is still recovering. Pyrsopoulos said “the liver is a forgiving organ” and is able to regenerate after some damage, but Mohan isn’t taking any risks. “I’ll never put another supplement in my body again.”