ABSTRACT
Milk thistle, Silybum marianum, is widely marketed as a herbal aid to liver and gall bladder health with the active constituents being extracted from the seed heads. Assessing the value of extracts of Silybum is complicated by the multitude of different chemicals within the seed heads which include a complex mixture of major flavonolignans: silybin A, silybin B, isosilybin A, isosilybin B, silychristin, isosilychristin and silydianin, which are of variable solubility in water and differentially absorbed after oral ingestion. Silybum marianum, a member of the Asteraceae family, naturally occurs widely throughout the Mediterranean and Southwest Europe to Afghanistan and Ethiopia. The liver can be damaged by a variety of different means, including regular administration of toxins such as alcohol or herbal medicines, but globally the commonest cause is persistent chronic infection with either the hepatitis B or hepatitis C virus, which affects many hundreds of millions of people.
