Does Bak Kut Teh really cause hepatotoxicity?

Excerpt

We would like to thank the authors for their recent letter [1] drawing attention to some interesting points in our study. The original paper [2] reported a pilot study of potential toxic effects of a popular herbal soup, Bak kut teh, following a case presented to the authors of rhabdomyolysis following consumption of the soup. The investigation was the first to demonstrate the toxicity of various soup formulations using the cell viability colorimetric MTT assay. The MTT assay is one of the most widely used assays for the determination of cytotoxicity or cell proliferation and provides an adequate quantitative measure with good intra- and inter-assay replication. Results also correlate well with other methodologies in accurately determining apoptotic death of many cell lines. This provides a strong foundation for future studies including in vivo models to further clarify the observed findings [3]. …