---
title: "Kambo (drug)"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kambo_(drug)"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:37:40.758126+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Medical claims ===
Non-indigenous users and practitioners of kambo claim that the alternative medicine helps with a wide variety of issues and conditions. These claims include treating addiction, depression, and chronic pain, reducing fevers, increasing fertility, boosting energy and physical strength, and improving mental clarity. It is also claimed that kambo removes negative energy. There is currently no scientific evidence to support positive health effect claims.. 
There is no solid medical evidence on how the frog toxins work, whether they are useful for treating anything, and whether they can be used safely: no clinical trials have tested them on humans, as of November 2019. Reports of adverse effects are numerous, including for use with experienced guidance. 
Kym Jenkins of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, in a Sydney Morning Herald article, said "people with mental illness are a more vulnerable group anyway for a variety of reasons. If you're feeling very anxious or very depressed, you're automatically more vulnerable, and you could be more susceptible to people advertising or marketing a quick fix. I do have concerns that people can be preyed upon when they are more vulnerable."
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) supports the TGA's ban on the sale, supply, and use of kambo, saying it considers kambo to be a "significant health risk".

=== Marketing ===
In non-indigenous use, the frog secretion is described and marketed as a "detox" treatment, cleanse, purge, and as a "vaccine" that is "good for everything". Kambo has been marketed both as a "scientific" remedy, emphasizing the biochemistry, and as a "spiritual" remedy, emphasizing its Indigenous origins. Purging (deliberate vomiting) has been a popular treatment since the 1800s. "Detox" has been described by Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine, as a term for conventional medical treatments for addiction, which has been "hijacked by entrepreneurs, quacks, and charlatans to sell a bogus treatment."
In Brazil, given the growth in the consumption of kambo in urban centers, there has been criticism by indigenous people, academics and communicators regarding the cultural appropriation of indigenous knowledge, the process of extracting the secretion of the Phyllomedusa bicolor frog, the form of transmission of wisdom, and the price charged by the ritual and the mystification of the origin of the frog.
There is also concern about pharmacological patents on the peptides identified in kambo (see biopiracy), the commercialization of the kambo outside its place of origin, and the unknown impact on frog populations, since many more are now removed from their natural habitats.
In light of the chemical complexity of the frog toxins, and their complex and potentially fatal effects, the authors of a 2022 review on the diagnosis and treatment of kambo cases said they urged "strict surveillance of the websites that encourage the use of this substance and [we] urge greater control of e-commerce or illicit trafficking of animals and secretions, including through the dark web".

== Environmental impact ==
The effect of the increased use of kambo rituals, and trafficking of the frogs and their secretions, may have an effect on the population of Phyllomedusa bicolor in its natural habitats: the forests of Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, the Guianas, Colombia, and Venezuela. Phyllomedusa bicolor is not considered an endangered species by the IUCN. Besides Phyllomedusa (species?), other threatened endemic frog species of South America's neotropical regions have been poached and smuggled on the black market.

=== Parasitology ===
Smuggling amphibians such as Phyllomedusa bicolor can spread parasites. Zoos keep frogs for conservation purposes, and there are many parasites present in these animals that naturally occur only in the native habitats. It is recommended for imported amphibians to go through a quarantine process to verify they are not spreading parasites that could damage other ecosystems. Parasite infection rates in frogs is 51%, while in salamanders it is 13%. Individuals who want to have them as pets are obligated and encouraged to get them examined to detect gastrointestinal parasites that could potentially be harmful. Neocosmocercella fisherae is the first nematode species found parasitising Phyllomedusa bicolor from the Brazilian Amazon region.

== Notable deaths ==
A 40-year-old businessman was charged in Brazil in 2008 with the illegal exercise of medicine and felony murder after administering kambo toxins to a business colleague who died; the deceased's son, who said his father had pressured him into participating, suffered more minor effects. In Chile, in 2009, Daniel Lara Aguilar, who suffered from chronic lumbar disc disease, died immediately after taking kambo administered by a local shaman in a mass healing ceremony; the autopsy was inconclusive due to pre-existing conditions. Medical literature reported a 2018 case in Italy of a man with obesity and ventricular hypertrophy, who, according to autopsy reports, died of cardiac arrhythmia while under the effects of kambo use. In March 2019, kambo practitioner Natasha Lechner suffered a cardiac arrest and died while receiving kambo. In April 2019, a homicide investigation was opened into the death by "severe cerebral edema" of a young person who had taken kambo toxins in Chile; the import of the frog and its secretions is illegal in Chile. In October 2021, Australian man Jarred Antonovich died at a festival in New South Wales from a perforated esophagus suspected to be caused by excessive vomiting after being administered kambo and N,N-dimethyltriptamine. After a car accident in 1997 from which he had to learn to walk and talk again, he was left with lasting impediments, the inquest heard, which may have contributed to the esophageal rupture.

== Pharmacology ==