Safety: Furanocoumarins and Look-Alikes

Most herbal safety sections are a shrug in paragraph form. This one is not, because Angelica archangelica carries two hazards that are genuine, documented, and routinely understated.

First, the furanocoumarins are real. This is a point where European angelica and Dong Quai genuinely diverge, and where a lot of writing gets the two plants confused. A. archangelica is a serious furanocoumarin plant — it contains angelicin, imperatorin, xanthotoxin and bergapten. Two of those are licensed pharmaceuticals used deliberately to make skin react to ultraviolet light. That gives angelica a real phototoxicity risk and a plausible drug-interaction concern, neither of which applies to Angelica sinensis in the same way.

Second, and far more serious: this plant has lethal look-alikes. A. archangelica is a big Apiaceae umbellifer — hollow ridged stems, huge compound leaves, dome-shaped flower heads. So is poison hemlock (Conium maculatum), which has killed people who mistook it for something edible, and so is giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), whose sap causes full-thickness burns that have required surgery. Foraging angelica on appearance is one of the more dangerous things an enthusiastic beginner can do.

Read this page before you take angelica in any concentrated form, and certainly before you go looking for it in a hedgerow.

Which Compounds Angelica Actually Carries
Phytophotodermatitis: How the Burn Happens
Who Is Actually at Risk
Giant Hogweed and the Severity Ceiling
The CYP3A4 Question — Plausible, Not Proven
Coumarins and Warfarin: Correcting a Common Error
Pregnancy and Breastfeeding
Carrot-Family Allergy
The Lethal Look-Alikes
Telling Them Apart — and Why That Is Not Enough
If Exposure Happens: What to Do
Other Cautions and Contraindications
The Honest Verdict
Key Research Papers
Connections

Which Compounds Angelica Actually Carries

Coumarins are a large family of plant compounds built on a benzopyrone skeleton. Furanocoumarins (also written furocoumarins) add a fused furan ring, and that extra ring is what makes them react with DNA under ultraviolet light. They come in two shapes:

Linear furanocoumarins — the psoralens. Angelica contains xanthotoxin (8-methoxypsoralen, the drug methoxsalen), bergapten (5-methoxypsoralen), and imperatorin.
Angular furanocoumarins — angelica contains angelicin, which is named after this genus. Angular furanocoumarins can form single adducts with DNA but not the cross-links that linear psoralens make, so they are generally the less phototoxic shape.

Two of these are not merely “plant chemicals.” Xanthotoxin (methoxsalen) is a prescription drug, given by mouth or applied topically and then combined with UVA light as PUVA therapy for psoriasis, vitiligo and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Bergapten (5-MOP) has been used the same way. When a page says angelica is “photosensitising,” it is not speaking loosely: the plant contains the actual molecules that dermatologists use to photosensitise people on purpose.

Quantities depend heavily on plant part and preparation:

Root — the richest source, and the part used in medicinal tinctures and in essential-oil distillation.
Fruit / seed — also rich. Icelandic work found the antiproliferative activity of a fruit tincture tracked almost entirely to imperatorin and xanthotoxin.
Leaf — lower. Measured SagaPro leaf tablets contained 280 µg of xanthotoxin and 2 µg of imperatorin per tablet.
Essential oil and CO₂ extract — concentrated. This is why angelica root oil is a restricted material in the fragrance industry and is not something to swallow or to apply undiluted.

For context, furanocoumarins are also normal dietary constituents. Grapefruit, limes, bergamot, celery, parsnip and parsley all contain them, and healthy people eat them daily without incident. The issue with angelica is concentration and route — a strong root tincture, an essential oil on skin, or handling the cut fresh plant, all in the presence of sunlight.

Phytophotodermatitis: How the Burn Happens

Phytophotodermatitis is a chemical burn that needs two ingredients: a psoralen on the skin and ultraviolet A light. Neither alone does much. Together they do a great deal.

The mechanism is well characterised. Psoralens are flat molecules that slide (intercalate) between the base pairs of DNA. When they absorb a UVA photon, they form a covalent bond with a pyrimidine base on one strand. A second photon lets a linear psoralen bond to the opposite strand as well, producing an interstrand cross-link that the cell cannot easily repair. Cell death and an intense inflammatory response follow. This is exactly the reaction PUVA therapy exploits under controlled dosing — but on an arm smeared with plant sap on a July afternoon, nothing is controlled.

There is a second mechanism that explains the pain. Laboratory work has shown that psoralens activate and photosensitise the TRPA1 and TRPV1 ion channels — the same sensory channels responsible for the burn of mustard oil and chilli. That is why phytophotodermatitis hurts and stings rather than merely itching like ordinary contact dermatitis.

The clinical course is distinctive:

Hours 0–12: nothing. This is the trap — people carry on gardening or walking in the sun because their skin feels fine.
Hours 12–24: burning, stinging and redness begin.
Hours 24–72: the reaction peaks. Blistering in more severe cases, sometimes large tense blisters that look and behave like a second-degree burn.
Week 1–2: blisters resolve, skin peels.
Weeks to months, sometimes more than a year: post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation — brown staining in the exact pattern of the original exposure. This is often the part that distresses people most, because it lasts.

The pattern is the giveaway. Phytophotodermatitis produces bizarre, non-anatomical shapes: streaks where a stem brushed the skin, drip marks, and sometimes a clear handprint where someone touched another person after handling the plant. Dermatologists know it well from lime juice at barbecues, where it has picked up nicknames like “margarita burn.” The same reaction from angelica, hogweed or wild parsnip is simply a larger dose of the same chemistry.

Who Is Actually at Risk

Risk scales with three things: how concentrated the furanocoumarin source is, whether it reaches skin, and how much UVA follows.

Highest risk:

Handling the fresh plant — cutting stems, digging roots, strimming or clearing angelica or its relatives on a sunny day. Sap on forearms plus sunshine is the classic scenario.
Angelica root essential oil on skin, especially undiluted, and especially before sun exposure. The fragrance industry restricts its concentration in leave-on products for precisely this reason, and EU cosmetic rules cap furocoumarins in sun and tanning products at trace levels.
Concentrated root tinctures or extracts taken in medicinal amounts during high-UV months or alongside phototherapy.
Anyone using a sunbed or receiving UV phototherapy. Adding a psoralen to a deliberate UVA dose is how PUVA works. Doing it accidentally is how PUVA goes wrong.

Lower risk: candied angelica stem, angelica seed in baking, a botanical trace in gin. Culinary exposure is not the concern of this page.

Practical precautions if you use concentrated angelica:

Wear gloves and long sleeves when handling the fresh plant, and wash exposed skin afterwards with soap and water before going back into the sun.
Do the cutting on an overcast day or in the evening if you have the choice.
Keep angelica root oil off skin that will see daylight; use it in wash-off products or not at all.
If you take medicinal amounts internally, be sensible about sun exposure — cover up, use a broad-spectrum sunscreen that includes UVA protection, and avoid sunbeds outright.
People with fair skin, a photosensitivity disorder, or a history of skin cancer should be more cautious than average, not less.

Giant Hogweed and the Severity Ceiling

To understand how bad furanocoumarin phototoxicity can get, look at angelica’s giant cousin. Heracleum mantegazzianum — giant hogweed — is the same family, the same chemistry, and a far higher dose.

The published case reports are not gentle reading. A patient developed a full-thickness burn from giant hogweed exposure that presented late and required surgical management. Occupational exposure has produced unusual and prolonged complications. Paediatric cases of phototoxic plant burns severe enough to need burn-unit wound care are documented. Sap in the eye can cause severe conjunctival injury and, in reported cases, temporary or lasting visual impairment.

Angelica is not giant hogweed, and ordinary angelica exposure rarely produces anything like that. But the comparison establishes the ceiling of the mechanism, and it explains why “it is only a plant” is the wrong instinct in this family. It also matters because giant hogweed is one of angelica’s look-alikes — a forager reaching confidently for a big umbellifer can get hogweed sap on both forearms before realising the mistake.

The CYP3A4 Question — Plausible, Not Proven

Furanocoumarins are the reason grapefruit juice interacts with medicines. The mechanism is well worked out: furanocoumarins in grapefruit — principally bergamottin and 6′,7′-dihydroxybergamottin — irreversibly inactivate CYP3A4 in the wall of the small intestine. CYP3A4 normally destroys a substantial fraction of many oral drugs before they reach the bloodstream. Knock it out, and more drug gets through. Blood levels rise, sometimes several-fold, and because the enzyme has to be rebuilt rather than merely released, the effect can persist for a day or more after a single glass.

This mechanism has been modelled in detail using physiologically based pharmacokinetic methods, and it is the accepted explanation for the grapefruit effect.

Where does angelica sit? It contains furanocoumarins of the same broad class — imperatorin and bergapten in particular have shown CYP inhibition in laboratory systems. What does not exist is a human pharmacokinetic study giving people angelica alongside a probe drug and measuring what happens. So the honest position is:

Mechanistically plausible. Same compound class, same enzyme, demonstrated in vitro.
Not quantified in humans. Nobody knows whether a normal angelica dose inhibits intestinal CYP3A4 meaningfully, or by how much.
Worth flagging anyway when the other drug has a narrow margin between working and harming.

Medicines where this matters most — the same list that carries a grapefruit warning:

Immunosuppressants: ciclosporin, tacrolimus, sirolimus.
Certain statins, particularly simvastatin and atorvastatin (rhabdomyolysis risk rises with blood level).
Some calcium-channel blockers, notably felodipine and nifedipine.
Antiarrhythmics including amiodarone and dronedarone.
Several benzodiazepines, and colchicine, where grapefruit interaction has been demonstrated clinically.
Some HIV and hepatitis-C antivirals, and several targeted cancer drugs.

What to do: if you take any drug whose label warns about grapefruit, treat concentrated angelica the same way — ask a pharmacist before starting it. Pharmacists are good at this question, it takes them two minutes, and it costs nothing.

Coumarins and Warfarin: Correcting a Common Error

Nearly every source that mentions angelica repeats some version of: it contains coumarins, coumarins thin the blood, avoid with warfarin. The advice is fine. The reasoning is wrong, and it is worth correcting because the same false logic gets applied to cinnamon, sweet clover, tonka bean and a dozen other plants.

Plain coumarin is not an anticoagulant. It is a fragrant compound — the smell of new-mown hay — found in sweet woodruff, tonka bean, sweet clover and cassia cinnamon. It has no meaningful effect on the clotting cascade. Its real toxicological concern is quite different: at high chronic intake it is hepatotoxic in susceptible people, which is why European food-safety bodies set a tolerable daily intake for coumarin from foods such as cassia cinnamon.

Warfarin is a 4-hydroxycoumarin, a structurally distinct derivative that inhibits vitamin K epoxide reductase and thereby blocks synthesis of clotting factors II, VII, IX and X. The historical connection runs through dicoumarol, which forms when sweet clover hay spoils and fungi modify the coumarin in it — the cattle-haemorrhage outbreaks of the 1920s that led to warfarin’s discovery. Fresh, undamaged plant coumarins do not do this.

Furanocoumarins are not anticoagulants either. Imperatorin, xanthotoxin, bergapten and angelicin are photosensitisers and enzyme inhibitors.

So the caution stands, but for a different and better reason: metabolic interference, not direct blood-thinning. Warfarin is metabolised mainly by CYP2C9, with CYP3A4 handling part of the load; a botanical with enzyme-inhibiting potential added to a drug titrated by INR is an avoidable complication.

Practical guidance:

If you take warfarin, tell the anticoagulation clinic before you start angelica, and expect them to want an extra INR check a week or two in.
If you take a DOAC (apixaban, rivaroxaban, edoxaban, dabigatran), note that several are CYP3A4 and P-glycoprotein substrates — ask a pharmacist.
If you take clopidogrel, ticagrelor or daily aspirin, mention it too.
Stop concentrated angelica at least a week before planned surgery or a dental extraction. This is standard advice for enzyme-active botanicals and costs you nothing.

Pregnancy and Breastfeeding

Avoid angelica in medicinal amounts during pregnancy. This is not hedging; there are three converging reasons.

Traditional emmenagogue use. Angelica was used across Europe specifically to bring on delayed menstruation. Whether or not it works, that is precisely the traditional indication that flags a plant as one to avoid in pregnancy.
Furanocoumarins interact with DNA. Psoralens form covalent adducts and cross-links with DNA when photoactivated. Systemic PUVA therapy is contraindicated in pregnancy. Deliberately increasing a pregnant person’s intake of the same compound class is not a reasonable trade for a herb with no proven benefit.
No safety data. No pregnancy trials, no pregnancy registry, no dose-finding work. Absence of reported harm in a plant nobody has studied is not reassurance.

Breastfeeding: likewise avoid concentrated preparations. Nothing is known about transfer into milk, and a psoralen-exposed infant with immature repair mechanisms and thin skin is not a risk worth taking for a herb with no established benefit.

What is fine: ordinary culinary exposure — a piece of candied angelica on a cake, a pinch of seed in baking. The distinction is between food quantities and medicinal ones, and it is a real distinction, not a formality.

Carrot-Family Allergy

Angelica is Apiaceae, and this family has a well-documented allergy cluster. The classic pattern is the celery–mugwort–birch–spice syndrome: people sensitised to birch or mugwort pollen react to celery, carrot and a range of Apiaceae spices through cross-reactive proteins. Cross-reactivity between carrot-specific IgE, celery, apiaceous spices and birch pollen has been demonstrated directly, and newer work has characterised allergens in anise and caraway.

If you react to celery, carrot, parsley, coriander, fennel, dill, caraway, anise or have significant mugwort or birch pollen allergy, treat angelica with caution. Start small if you try it at all. Reactions can range from oral tingling and lip swelling to, rarely, anaphylaxis — and celery in particular is a recognised cause of severe food-allergic reactions in Europe, which is why it is one of the named allergens on European food labels.

Stop and seek emergency help for swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, difficulty breathing, widespread hives, or faintness after any dose.

The Lethal Look-Alikes

This is the section that matters most. Everything above is about discomfort and prudence. This is about death.

Angelica archangelica shares its general silhouette with several plants in the same family, two of which are seriously dangerous.

Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum)

The plant of Socrates. It is common across Europe, North America and beyond, growing on roadsides, waste ground and stream banks — often the very damp, disturbed ground angelica likes.

Its toxins are piperidine alkaloids, principally coniine and γ-coniceine. They act on nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, producing a depolarising blockade at the neuromuscular junction. The clinical picture is an ascending paralysis: initial nausea and salivation, then weakness that climbs from the legs upward, then failure of the diaphragm. Death is by respiratory paralysis in a patient who may remain conscious. Rhabdomyolysis and kidney injury are documented complications in survivors.

The case literature is real and modern, not historical curiosity: prolonged ventilatory failure and flaccid quadriparesis after ingestion in an adult; respiratory failure in a toddler; a published review of hemlock intoxication compiling cases; and a toxicological reconstruction of Socrates’ death itself. There is no antidote. Treatment is supportive — airway protection and mechanical ventilation until the alkaloids clear.

Poisonings typically happen through misidentification: hemlock mistaken for wild carrot, wild parsnip, cow parsley, fennel or angelica; hemlock root mistaken for parsnip; hemlock seeds mistaken for anise.

Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum)

Not usually lethal, but capable of the full-thickness burns described above. It is enormous — commonly two to four metres and sometimes more — with flower heads that can approach half a metre across. Because it is so much larger than angelica, it is easy to dismiss as unmistakable. It is not: a first-year hogweed rosette, or a specimen in poor ground, sits in exactly angelica’s size range.

Water hemlock (Cicuta species)

Chiefly a North American hazard and among the most acutely toxic plants on the continent. Its toxin, cicutoxin, is a GABA-A antagonist that causes violent seizures and status epilepticus, with death possible within hours of eating a small amount of root. It grows in wet ground, marsh edges and stream banks — again, angelica habitat.

Others in the confusion set

Common hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium) is also phototoxic, though far less so than its giant relative. Cow parsley, hemlock water-dropwort (Oenanthe crocata, extremely toxic in Britain and Ireland), wild parsnip and wild carrot all add to the general umbellifer muddle. Wild angelica (Angelica sylvestris) is a genuine and harmless native relative that is itself frequently mistaken for the dangerous ones.

Telling Them Apart — and Why That Is Not Enough

Field guides list distinguishing features. They are worth knowing. They are also not sufficient, and this page will say so plainly rather than implying that reading a list makes you safe.

Angelica archangelica: stout hollow ridged stems, usually green and sometimes purple-flushed; very large leaves divided into broad, toothed leaflets; the leaf stalks widen at the base into a conspicuous inflated sheath that clasps the stem — the most useful single feature; nearly spherical umbels of greenish-white to yellowish-green flowers; smell strongly sweet-aromatic when bruised, celery crossed with juniper.

Poison hemlock: stems smooth and completely hairless, marked with purple or reddish blotches; leaves finely divided and fern-like, much more delicate than angelica’s; flat-topped umbels of pure white flowers; smell unpleasant and mousy or musty when crushed.

Giant hogweed: enormous; stems thick, blotched purple and covered in coarse white bristly hairs; leaves deeply and jaggedly lobed; flat-topped white umbels up to half a metre across.

Now the honest caveats, which matter more than the list:

Purple on the stem is not a reliable test. Angelica stems are often purple-tinged. “Purple blotches means hemlock” is a rule that will fail you in both directions.
The smell test requires touching the plant. To crush a leaf and smell it you must handle it — which is exactly how you get hogweed sap on your hands. And hemlock’s alkaloids can be absorbed through skin.
Flower colour overlaps. “Greenish-white versus pure white” is a judgement call in the field, in variable light, on plants at different stages.
Young plants are far harder. Almost every distinguishing feature applies to a mature flowering specimen. First-year rosettes are the genuinely dangerous stage and the one most likely to be gathered as a “wild green.”
Confidence is the actual hazard. The published poisonings are not people who had no idea what they were doing. They are people who were sure.

The recommendation this page makes is simple and unfashionable: do not forage angelica. Buy dried root or seed from a reputable herb supplier, where the material has been identified by someone whose job it is. Grow it from named seed in your own garden if you want the plant — it is handsome and easy in damp ground, and you will know exactly what it is because you planted it. Neither of those routes can kill you, and the wild-gathered version tastes no better.

If Exposure Happens: What to Do

Plant sap on skin

Get out of the sun immediately and cover the area.
Wash thoroughly with soap and cool water as soon as possible. Speed matters — the reaction needs UV, so removing the sap before light exposure can prevent it entirely.
Keep the area out of sunlight for at least 48 hours, and covered or well protected for weeks afterwards. Sun on affected skin worsens the lasting brown discoloration.
Cool compresses help the sting. Over-the-counter analgesia is reasonable.
See a doctor if blisters form, if a large area is involved, if the face is affected, or if there is any sign of infection. Significant blistering is managed as a burn, and topical or oral corticosteroids are sometimes used.
Expect the pigmentation to last. Weeks to months is normal; occasionally longer. Sun protection is the main thing that helps it fade.

Sap in the eye

Irrigate immediately with copious clean water and seek urgent medical attention. Hogweed sap in the eye has caused serious injury, and this is not a wait-and-see situation.

Suspected hemlock or unknown-plant ingestion

This is an emergency. Do not wait for symptoms.

United States: Poison Help, 1-800-222-1222, available 24 hours. Call 911 if the person is unwell.
United Kingdom: call 999 for anyone unwell, or 111 for advice.
Elsewhere: your national poison information centre or emergency number.
Do not induce vomiting.
Take the plant with you — or photograph it — if it can be done safely. Identification changes management.
Remember that hemlock poisoning has no antidote, and that supportive care including ventilation is life-saving when started in time. Early presentation is everything.

Other Cautions and Contraindications

Active peptic ulcer, gastritis or significant reflux. A herb whose traditional mechanism is increasing gastric acid secretion is the wrong choice.
Diabetes on glucose-lowering therapy. Some sources report blood-sugar effects; monitor if you use concentrated preparations.
Photosensitising medicines. Doxycycline and other tetracyclines, fluoroquinolones, amiodarone, thiazide diuretics, some NSAIDs, retinoids, voriconazole and St John’s wort all sensitise skin to light. Stacking a furanocoumarin plant on top is asking for trouble.
Phototherapy or PUVA. Do not use concentrated angelica while receiving UV treatment. Tell the dermatology team what you take.
History of skin cancer or actinic damage. Furanocoumarin–UV chemistry damages DNA, and long-term PUVA exposure is associated with increased skin cancer risk. Be conservative.
Children. No dosing data, thinner skin, more sun exposure. Culinary quantities only.
Long-term daily use. Not traditional and not studied. Angelica was used in short courses; keep it that way.
Essential oil internally. Do not. Concentrated furanocoumarin material was never intended to be swallowed.

The Honest Verdict

Angelica is a pleasant, historic and largely benign herb in culinary amounts. The candied stem, the seed in baking, the botanical note in gin — these carry centuries of safe use and nothing on this page should frighten anyone away from them.

In concentrated form, angelica is a genuine furanocoumarin exposure and deserves the same respect you would give any other photosensitising agent: keep it away from sun and sunbeds, keep the essential oil off skin and out of your mouth, avoid it in pregnancy, and ask a pharmacist if you take anything with a grapefruit warning. The correct reason to be careful with anticoagulants is enzyme interference, not the folklore about coumarins thinning blood.

And in the wild, angelica sits inside the single most dangerous plant family for foragers to guess at. Poison hemlock has no antidote. Giant hogweed has burned people badly enough to need surgery. The distinguishing features are real but they fail on young plants, in poor light, and against confident people. Buy it or grow it. Do not gather it.

That is a herb worth enjoying, with clear eyes about what it is.

Key Research Papers

Every identifier below was verified live against NCBI E-utilities — first author, title, journal and year had to match before a PMID was printed here.

Furanocoumarins and phototoxicity

Melough MM, Cho E, Chun OK. Furocoumarins: a review of biochemical activities, dietary sources and intake, and potential health risks. Food and Chemical Toxicology. 2018;113:99–107.
Irizar A, Boislève F, Gautier F, et al. Phototoxicity and skin damage: a review of adverse effects of some furocoumarins found in natural extracts. Food and Chemical Toxicology. 2025;200:115332. A recent safety-assessment review covering the furocoumarins found in botanical extracts.
Babes A, Kichko TI, Selescu T, et al. Psoralens activate and photosensitize transient receptor potential channels ankyrin type 1 (TRPA1) and vanilloid type 1 (TRPV1). European Journal of Pain. 2021;25(1):122–135. Why phytophotodermatitis burns rather than merely itches.
Kowal NM, Eyjolfsson R, Olafsdottir ES. Investigations on the constituents of SagaPro tablets, a food supplement manufactured from Angelica archangelica leaf. Die Pharmazie. 2017;72(1):3–4. Measured xanthotoxin and imperatorin content of a commercial angelica product.

Giant hogweed — the severity ceiling

Flanagan KE, Blankenship K, Houk L. Botanical briefs: phytophotodermatitis caused by giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum). Cutis. 2021;108(5):251–253.
Chan JC, Sullivan PJ, O’Sullivan MJ, Eadie PA. Full thickness burn caused by exposure to giant hogweed: delayed presentation, histological features and surgical management. Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery. 2011;64(1):128–130.
Klimaszyk P, Klimaszyk D, Piotrowiak M, Popiołek A. Unusual complications after occupational exposure to giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum): a case report. International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health. 2014;27(1):141–144.
Pfurtscheller K, Trop M. Phototoxic plant burns: report of a case and review of topical wound treatment in children. Pediatric Dermatology. 2014;31(6):e156–e159.

Poison hemlock — the lethal look-alike

Karakasi MV, Tologkos S, Papadatou V, Raikos N, Lambropoulou M, Pavlidis P. Conium maculatum intoxication: literature review and case report on hemlock poisoning. Forensic Science Review. 2019;31(1):23–36.
Lung DD, Scott BJ, Wu AH, Gerona RR. Prolonged ventilatory failure and flaccid quadriparesis after ingestion of poison hemlock. Muscle & Nerve. 2013;48(5):823–827.
West PL, Horowitz BZ, Montanaro MT, Lindsay JN. Poison hemlock-induced respiratory failure in a toddler. Pediatric Emergency Care. 2009;25(11):761–763.
Frank BS, Michelson WB, Panter KE, Gardner DR. Ingestion of poison hemlock (Conium maculatum). Western Journal of Medicine. 1995;163(6):573–574.
Dayan AD. Death of Socrates: a likely case of poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) poisoning. Clinical Toxicology. 2024;62(1):56–60.

Drug interactions

Fuhr LM, Marok FZ, Fuhr U, Selzer D, Lehr T. Physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling of bergamottin and 6,7-dihydroxybergamottin to describe CYP3A4-mediated grapefruit-drug interactions. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 2023;114(2):470–482.
Wason S, DiGiacinto JL, Davis MW. Effects of grapefruit and Seville orange juices on the pharmacokinetic properties of colchicine in healthy subjects. Clinical Therapeutics. 2012;34(10):2161–2173.
Angelica-specific human pharmacokinetic interaction data do not exist. PubMed search.

Apiaceae allergy

Helbling A, Lopez M, Schwartz HJ, Lehrer SB. Reactivity of carrot-specific IgE antibodies with celery, apiaceous spices, and birch pollen. Annals of Allergy. 1993;70(6):495–499.
Lukschal A, Wallmann J, Bublin M, et al. Mimotopes for Api g 5, a relevant cross-reactive allergen, in the celery-mugwort-birch-spice syndrome. Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Research. 2016;8(2):124–131.
Słowianek M, Wagner A. New allergens from spices in the Apiaceae family: anise Pimpinella anisum L. and caraway Carum carvi L. Central European Journal of Immunology. 2020;45(3):241–247.

Live PubMed Searches

Connections

All Herbs
Angelica — the main topic page.
Angelica Benefits — hub for this series.
Digestive and Bitter Tonic
Respiratory and Circulation
Anxiety, Sleep and Nervous System
Dong Quai — Angelica sinensis, which does not carry the same furanocoumarin profile.
Fennel — Apiaceae relative, and part of the same allergy cross-reactivity cluster.
Lovage — Apiaceae relative, another plant not to guess at in the wild.
Chen Pi — citrus peel, another traditional furanocoumarin-adjacent aromatic.
Toxins — the site’s toxicology section.

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