Almost 4,000 metric tons of chamomile flowers are used every year in German homes alone – primarily in the form of chamomile tea. Chamomile tea has been regarded for generations as a herbal medicine to help treat infections, inflammations or stomach and digestive disorders. Rightly so, for it has been proved that true chamomile, Matricaria recutita, possesses substances that act, for example, as bactericides, fungicides and deodorants and that even help heal wounds.

The question is: are all these substances still present in your finished cup of brewed tea? Did they even exist in the purchased tea product? Is there a difference between the chamomile products found in supermarkets or in pharmacies? And does it make a difference whether you buy the complete chamomile flower heads or tea bags containing finely chopped chamomile?

Bionorica’s CEO Professor Michael Popp wanted to find out. In his capacity as chairman of the "Komitee Forschung Naturmedizin" (Committee for Research into Natural Medicine), Professor Popp and Dr. Gudrun Abel, Director of Research at Bionorica, commissioned a scientific study into the composition of various chamomile products. Loose chamomile flowers from drug stores and pharmacies as well as tea bags from drug stores, pharmacies and supermarkets were analyzed in the laboratory. Liquid chamomile concentrates from drug stores and pharmacies were also investigated. In total the scientists examined ten types of tea bags, five loose teas and nine concentrates – and, in some cases, several batches of each. The tests were carried out at the Institute of Analytical Chemistry and Radiochemistry, located at the Leopold Franzens University in Innsbruck, Austria.

“The main focus of our interest were the constituents with medicinal value – in other words, essential oils and flavonoids," says Gudrun Abel. The investigations involved chromatographic processes such as thinlayer chromatography, gas chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography. While the thin-layer chromatography gave a good overview of the distribution of certain constituents, the so-called fingerprint, the high-performance and gas chromatography tests identified the actual amounts of the individual components.

The thin-layer chromatography already indicated a clear trend: Both in terms of the essential oils and the flavonoids, the test values obtained from the loose teas bought from a pharmacy were clearly more intensive than those of tea bags. Even within the respective subgroups there were differences. Those brands of tea bags sold by pharmacists came out best. To sum up the results: loose teas had more content than tea bags. Of all the tea bag brands, those products sold in pharmacies had the highest score.

However, the analytical chemists found the highest concentration of active ingredients in the chamomile extracts. This was to be expected, as these are concentrates. But even here there were differences in the fingerprints, i.e. in the ratios of the concentrations of the constituent substances to each other. There was, for instance, one product with a very high natural alpha-bisabolol content but almost no farnesenes. Some products, on the other hand, had only small amounts of alpha-bisobolol but greater bisobolol oxide content. These are all important constituents of the essential oil. Another interesting finding was that in one chamomile extract – available from drug stores – virtually none of the constituents normally found in essential oil could be traced. "This indicates that completely different raw materials were used," says Dr. Gudrun Abel.

The precise quantification of individual substances confirmed the results of the thin-layer chromatography. The loose tea products contained a higher proportion of the materials relevant to medicinal benefits. Particularly obvious was the difference between the flavonoid glycosides luteolin-7-O glucoside and apigenin 7-O glucoside. For the latter, the European Pharmacopeia requires a minimum content of 0.25 percent by mass. This criterion was met by all loose teas tested. However, only half of the tea bag products sampled fulfilled this requirement, including all the brands sold in pharmacies.

So it is quite apparent that at least some manufacturers do not just process the pure flower heads of chamomile to fill their tea bags, as is normal with loose tea makers, but also use other parts of the plant.

This can be seen by examining a tea bag’s contents. The tea in many bag samples proved to be much browner than the yellowy shreds of German chamomile flowers. So it is a logical assumption that some supermarket products are bulked up with stalks and leaves, thus resulting in a loss of quality for the consumer because it is mainly the flower heads that are of medicinal importance.



“The tea made from tea bags does not necessarily have to be inferior," says Gudrun Abel, for they, too, can contain genuine chopped flowers. But how is a consumer supposed to be able to tell from the outside what quality he or she is actually buying? "Ask your pharmacist for advice," suggests the Director of Bionorica’s Research.

The fact that even among loose teas there are different active ingredient profiles makes it clear that marketing a natural product such as the flower of the Matricaria recutita (Matricariae flos) in a quality that is in compliance with the European Pharmacopeia is not simple or straightforward. This is no surprise to the experts at Bionorica, who know only too well that when it comes to phytopharmaceuticals, species selection, cultivation conditions, time of harvesting and the kind of the plant constituents used are all contributing factors to quality.

So anyone who cares about quality when buying chamomile tea or flowers should make it a rule to consult their pharmacist, who is in the best position to advise on which tea products are based on which raw materials and are thus the most effective. "Our general advice to consumers is to take advantage of the expertise of the pharmacist when purchasing herbal products for medicinal purposes," says Professor Popp on behalf of the Committee for Research into Natural Medicines.

And another thing must be kept in mind when buying tea products, says Popp. "Chamomile and other herbal teas are only supportive measures." Even if the chamomile flowers have the best and most therapeutically desirable combination of active ingredients, their preparation as tea is only suitable to a degree to release the full potential of the plant material. Some substances evaporate or are even destroyed when over-boiled. It is estimated that about 70 percent of the essential oil is retained in a normal infusion.

To take advantage of the full spectrum of active ingredients one should therefore use prepared remedies, especially those based on the special extract principle of phytoengineering. This lays down standards for uniform raw material quality, the best scientific extraction processes, pharmacological effects and clinically proved efficacy. Manufacturers of high-quality products also take care to eliminate unwanted ingredients, such as allergens. In this case, too, if you are in doubt, your pharmacist will help you choose the ideal product for you.