But news of that prohibition has failed to reach consumers, the Harvard team discovered: None of the Brazilian women surveyed by the researchers had heard about the ban.
“They are just struggling to lose weight and wanting to try anything that might work,’’ said the study’s lead author, Dr. Pieter Cohen, an internist at Cambridge Health Alliance and an assistant professor at Harvard.
With a willowy woman adorning its golden package, Pai You Guo, made in China, is marketed as a natural way to lose weight and is sold in Chinese apothecaries alongside bins of ginseng, slabs of shark’s fin, and other traditional Chinese herbs and spices. The Globe found the product last week in two shops in Chinatown.
“People … have the understanding that it only contains natural herbal ingredients, so it must be safe,’’ Cohen said. “But that couldn’t be further from the truth.’’
The US Food and Drug Administration announced the recall in 2009 because the product was found to contain two dangerous substances, sibutramine and phenolphthalein.
Cohen’s study, published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, surveyed 565 Brazilian women from last October to January in a health clinic and several churches in Greater Boston and found that 23 percent said they had taken Pai You Guo. Most of the women who had used the supplement said they purchased it since the recall.
The researchers targeted Brazilian women because alternative diet products are popular in their community.
Nearly 30 percent of women who used the product said they bought it at local stores, and 9 percent bought it over the Internet. Two-thirds said they purchased it from an acquaintance.
The majority of users reported at least one adverse side effect, most typically dry mouth, anxiety, and insomnia. But some reported more serious health problems, including heart palpitations, depression, fainting, nausea, and vomiting.
Lucimara Rodrigues, a 27-year-old Allston resident, said in an interview with the Globe that she had not heard about the ban when she started taking the pills earlier this year for several weeks. They made her sick.
