Khat Chewing from the Pharmacological Point of View: An Update

Abstract

Khat chewing is deeply rooted in the every day life of people living in the Horn of Africa and in South Arabia, where Catha edulis is endemic. Considered little more than an exotic habit producing just mild pharmacological effects, systematic investigations on its active principles have instead lead to the isolation and chemical characterization of cathinone, a compound structurally related to amphetamine. Three decades of intense experimental and clinical research on khat have depicted a consistently clear picture of its pharmacological and toxicological effects.

Keywords:

• cathinone
• khat chewing

Notes

¹ The journal's style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note.

² The reader is referred to Hills's criteria for causation, which were developed in order to help assist researchers and clinicians determine whether factors were causes of a particular disease or outcomes or merely associated (The Environment and Disease: Associations or Causation? by A. B. Hill, 1965, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 58, pp. 295-300). Editor's note.