Careful with Red-Yeast Rice Pills

You can still buy red-yeast rice pills from US suppliers on the Internet, despite a warning from the FDA on their use over a year ago. The pills, which are promoted and sold as treatments for high cholesterol, contain lovastatin, the active pharmaceutical ingredient in Mevacor®. Lovostatin is an effective statin prescribed for lowering LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides, and raising HDL-cholesterol. It can, like other statins, cause rare instances of severe muscle problems, which may lead to kidney failure.

As red-yeast rice is a rice extract is not regulated as a drug by the FDA. There may be, therefore, a number of problems with the quality of the pills. Content uniformity is all over the place: the amount of lovastatin in a pill can range from 0.1 mg up to 10 mg among 10 brands examined. And poorly manufactured pills may contain a toxin called citrinin, a by-product of manufacture.

If you need to lower your cholesterol, you’d be infinitely better off getting a good generic statin drug from your family doctor. Ignore the hype offered for red-yeast pills and other herbal supplements for raised cholesterol, e.g. policosanol, or guggul.