But it’s natural

The Herald has a story claiming that a set of chemicals that have been proposed as an antibacterial additive for meat actually have large effects on sex-hormone levels.  Usually this would be a story about the need to ban the chemicals immediately, but this time the headline is “‘Viagra effect’ from pomegranate juice”, and they’re in favour of it.

Of course, the ‘Viagra effect’ label is completely bogus (the quote marks suggest that it comes from the researchers’ press release, which would be very dodgy if true).  The researchers claim to have found an increase in testosterone levels in men and women who drank a daily glass of pomegranate juice.  Viagra is involved in blood vessel dilation; it has nothing to do with testosterone, and a previous suggestion that pomegranate juice might really have Viagra-like effects has been tested and rejected.

So, what about the testosterone effects?  Well, what we have is a story based on a press release about a small, unpublished, uncontrolled, open-label study. The most positive one could possibly be about this is “It will be worth waiting for the real publication” or,  perhaps, “I hope it’s not true, because messing with steroid hormones like that is scary”.  It’s reassuring to note that last year the same group said pomegranate juice reduced office stress.  In 2009, they said it reduced blood pressure and cortisol levels.   You will notice that the last link is a press release from a manufacture of pomegranate juice, who sponsored all these studies.  I haven’t linked to actual publications, because according to the PubMed database neither of these results has yet been published either.

There’s a lot of this around: a different pomegranate manufacturer has been sued by the US Federal Trade Commission (in 2010).  The Wall Street Journal wrote

The FTC’s target is not POM’s generally worded, eye-catching ads with lines such as “Cheat Death,” said an agency official. That ad showed a bottle of pomegranate juice with a rope around its neck.

Instead, the government complaint is directed at more specific health claims.In addition to talking about arterial plaque and blood flow, some POM ads describe company-funded clinical trials that, according to the company, show POM juice products can slow the progression of prostate cancer by lowering the level of antigens in the body called PSAs.

The agency’s complaint says that some of POM’s studies did not show heart disease benefits and that the prostate cancer study wasn’t conducted in a standard, scientifically rigorous manner.

The findings about pomegranate juice could be true, but it’s clear that the target isn’t people who actually care whether they are true.