User:Caminle/sandbox

Traditional medicine and adverse effects
Milk thistle has been used in traditional medicine since antiquity, primarily to treat liver dysfunction. The herb was also recommended to treat serpent bites and for carrying off bile. Silymarin is extracted from the milk thistle seeds and available as a standardized extract. Alternative medicine practitioners attribute the liver-protective effect to anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic flavonoids contained in silymarin. Cirrhosis of the liver is one of the most common disease treated with them. Although milk thistle has been used in traditional medicine for centuries, there is no clinical evidence that it has any medicinal effect, and the quality of research has been poor. However, some studies have found milk thistle to be beneficial for people with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and diabetes. In 2019, Cancer Research UK stated: "We need a lot more research with reliable clinical trials before we can be sure that milk thistle will play any part in treating or preventing cancers."

Use of milk thistle may cause stomach upset and produce allergic reactions in some people.