A dubious study about Tongkat Ali and liver injury

By tongkatali.org
tongkataliorg3@gmail.com
July 10, 2025

A dubious study about Tongkat Ali and liver injury makes the rounds among AI assistants.

The study is published here:

https://www.cureus.com/articles/
235047-a-rare-case-of-tongkat-ali
-induced-liver-injury-a-case-report#!/

Cureus is an open-access journal. It is financed by fees (345 to 1300 US dollars) that authors pay in order to get published.

If the income of an open-access journal depends entirely on payments by authors, the trend is to publish almost anything as long as an author pays.

In another open-access journal (Crimson Publishers), psychology lecturer Gary Lewis was able to publish a hoax "research paper" that "uncovered" that right-wing politicians wipe their asses with the left hand, and left-wing politicians do so with the right hand.

Many serious scientist regard open-access journals as a scam.

Here is why the study on a rare case of Tongkat Ali-induced liver injury is dubious:

The liver injury was reported in a 47-year-old bodybuilder. It is well known that bodybuilders abuse anabolic steroids. Liver injury is a common side effect of anabolic steroids.

The presumption that the liver injury was caused by Tongkat Ali was based solely on the assertion of the bodybuilder that the product he used was Tongkat Ali.

This Tongkat Ali was not identified (no manufacturer or product details, no image) in the study, and neither was the dosage.

It isn't farfetched to suspect that the bodybuilder did not want to admit to using anabolic steroids as these substances are illegal without prescription.

It could also be that an illegal anabolic steroid product was just labelled as Tongkat Ali in order to make its transport less suspicious.

Taking into account that this study is the only report on liver injury induced by a product referred to as Tongkat Ali, it is an unforgivable lapse that the authors of this article apparently have not even ever seen the item referred to by the bodybuilder as Tongkat Ali.

Conclusion: the assumption that Tongkat Ali caused this or any liver injury is not trustworthy at all. Artificial intelligence, unfortunately, cannot sufficiently differentiate between probable and improbable "truth".