The short answer
Chamomile tea may affect cyclosporine levels, but the evidence is limited to weak case observations. One recipient’s levels fell after stopping a large daily amount of chamomile tea. Discuss regular tea use and planned changes with your transplant team rather than assuming that every cup or extract has the same effect.
What this answer covers
Oral Matricaria chamomilla, also called Matricaria recutita, with systemic oral cyclosporine. The clinical signal concerns tea; exact species authentication and product strength were incomplete. Roman chamomile, topical products and concentrated extracts are not interchangeable exposures.
- Supplement or preparation
- Matricaria chamomilla
- Medication ingredient
- cyclosporine
What happened in the chamomile case?
A kidney transplant recipient drank at least 1 to 1.5 liters of a single brand of chamomile tea each day. After replacing it mainly with rose-hip tea, his cyclosporine trough levels fell over several weeks despite an initially unchanged dose. The prescriber later increased cyclosporine. This timing suggests a possible interaction but does not prove its cause.
Why are the other tea cases different?
The same report describes a nine-herb tea that contained chamomile, with cyclosporine levels moving in the opposite direction after withdrawal. The responsible ingredient was never identified. A third case involved different fruit-tea mixtures. Those observations should not be counted as additional isolated chamomile cases or used to predict chamomile’s direction of effect.
Does the name on the package matter?
Matricaria recutita is a botanical synonym of Matricaria chamomilla. That helps interpret an explicitly named ingredient, but a product called only chamomile is not necessarily authenticated. The amount brewed, ingredients and plant preparation all matter. The tea case does not test concentrated capsules, essential oils or a mixture sold for sleep.
How should regular tea use be managed?
Tell your transplant team the tea brand, ingredients, volume and how regularly you drink it, including plans to stop or switch. Because levels fell after withdrawal in the reported case, a major change may warrant monitoring in either direction. No proven spacing rule was identified, and cyclosporine doses should be changed only by your prescriber.
Evidence and practical considerations
Absorption & effectiveness
Chamomile tea may affect cyclosporine levels, but the evidence is limited to weak case observations. One recipient’s levels fell after stopping a large daily amount of chamomile tea. Discuss regular tea use and planned changes with your transplant team rather than assuming that every cup or extract has the same effect.
- Exact scope
- Oral Matricaria chamomilla, also called Matricaria recutita, with systemic oral cyclosporine. The clinical signal concerns tea; exact species authentication and product strength were incomplete. Roman chamomile, topical products and concentrated extracts are not interchangeable exposures. with Cyclosporine, RxCUI 3008, IN, systemic oral use. Neoral modified microemulsion and conventional Sandimmune are distinguished; neither is automatically dose-equivalent to the other. The Neoral label identifies cyclosporine as the active ingredient and basis of strength. Intravenous reference experiments are identified separately; ophthalmic and topical use are excluded.
- Medication form and route
- oral
- Timing or duration
- Only the durations described in the sources are established; no untested persistence or dose-spacing interval is inferred.
What remains uncertain
- One uncontrolled single-tea withdrawal observation, substitution with another tea, no rechallenge or authenticated product, and no defined effect size. Mixed products and corrupted concentration units are not used for precise attribution.
Factors that may matter: tea volume and strength; botanical identity; mixed ingredients; starting or stopping regular use; cyclosporine formulation.
Read the supporting source summaries
Source 1: regulatory prescribing information
dailymed.nlm.nih.gov · Source check Sep 10, 2026
Population: Patients prescribed systemic oral cyclosporine, including transplant recipients.
Requires clinical and blood-level monitoring, recognizes nephrotoxicity and hyperkalemia, cautions with potassium-containing drugs and explicitly advises avoiding grapefruit and grapefruit juice. Neoral and Sandimmune are not bioequivalent.
How this applies: Direct exact-medication identity and oral monitoring guidance. Pair-specific applicability is restricted to the named food or potassium-containing products; other supplements require their own evidence.
A regulatory label does not quantify each supplement interaction. Botanical effects and absolute event rates cannot be inferred from cyclosporine toxicity alone. Formulation-specific findings must be retained.
Source 2: primary clinical case report series
academic.oup.com · Source check Sep 10, 2026
Population: Three kidney transplant recipients; only Case 2 involved a single-brand chamomile tea, in a 37-year-old man.
Case 2 cyclosporine troughs fell over weeks after chamomile tea was stopped, eventually prompting a dose increase. Case 1 had the opposite temporal pattern with the multi-herb tea; the responsible ingredient was unresolved.
How this applies: Weak clinical signal specific to a large daily volume of chamomile tea. Mixed-tea outcomes are not attributed to chamomile alone; extracts, oils and occasional cups are not directly tested.
Uncontrolled cases, no pure-tea rechallenge or chemical authentication, exact cyclosporine formulation unresolved, and alternative-beverage confounding. Numeric concentration units are corrupted in the PDF text layer and are not reused. Case 3 was a different fruit-tea mixture, not isolated chamomile.
Source 3: authoritative botanical taxonomy
powo.science.kew.org · Source check Sep 10, 2026
Population: Botanical taxonomy reference; no clinical participants.
Matricaria chamomilla is accepted; Matricaria recutita is listed as a synonym.
How this applies: Permits the named M. recutita ingredient to be linked to M. chamomilla while keeping unidentified common-name products uncertain.
Taxonomic synonymy does not verify the species, part or contents of a tea sold only as chamomile and supplies no interaction evidence.
Research assessment: · Open full citations ↗
Review and change history
- Publication status
- Published research summary
- Clinical review
- Not yet recorded
| Date | Update |
|---|---|
| Article prepared | |
| Original studies and regulatory sources checked; a new article prepared with exact formulation and access limits. No independent clinical review is recorded. | |
| Research summary published |
Article revision: a182f897fcbfb3b9
This guide brings together the evidence records used by our interaction checker. Each finding retains its own preparation limits, research date, and source summaries.
Full citations require verification. Reading this answer and the source summaries does not.
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