Article From NPI – Kratom Groups

This week, a group of prominent kratom researchers in the U.S. sounded the alarm over 7-hydroxymitragynine and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl products.

This past May in Atlantic City, New Jersey, at a business-to-business trade expo for the smoke shop industry, Todd Underwood was talking to a man who had just tried a product containing 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), a compound associated with the botanical kratom.

According to Underwood, whose beverage company MitWellness sells products containing kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) and kava (Piper methysticum), the man attending the CHAMPS B2B event went to an emergency room after mentioning he had tried 7-OH for the first time, couldn’t breathe and felt like he was losing consciousness.

“We already have an opioid crisis,” Underwood said, cautioning the U.S. market is being flooded with 7-OH tablets that pose a risk to public health. 7-OH “is highly addictive. Somebody’s going to die.”

Now, a group of prominent kratom researchers in the U.S. is sounding the alarm over 7-OH and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl (formed in the human body from 7-OH after metabolism of mitragynine) products. On Tuesday, June 11, four academics from the University of Florida College of Pharmacy and John Hopkins University School of Medicine noted that 7-OH and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl are not present in native kratom leaf material. A product with high amounts of these compounds contains an isolated, purified or semi-synthetically generated form of 7-OH and/or mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, according to their public statement.

“Such products should not be scientifically considered or commercially categorized as kratom or as a kratom product,” the researchers wrote. They added, such claims are not credible or factual and a product containing high amounts of the aforementioned compounds is subject to FDA drug approval based on the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA).

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