Labisia pumila (Kacip Fatimah) Extracts: Aligning Extraction Research with the Clinical, Regulatory and Safety Evidence—A Critical Review

Extraction studies of Labisia pumila (kacip fatimah) usually select solvents by yield, phenolic acid content and antioxidant assays. A representative study recommended supercritical carbon dioxide with 70% ethanol–water co-solvent for the leaves of var. pumila. This review asks whether such optimisation produces extracts comparable to those with human, regulatory or safety evidence. The only placebo-controlled trial of a single-herb extract used a water extract of var. alata, and the extract assessed by the European Food Safety Authority was a hydroalcoholic extract of the whole plant, judged safe only up to 350 mg/day. Recalculation from the source study shows that its three phenolic markers made up at most 1.7% of any extract and that the best supercritical extract contained about one-twelfth of the maximum gallic acid content specified for the EFSA-assessed material. The superiority of supercritical extraction over maceration was confounded by temperature and solvent volume. The CO2-only extract, discarded for lacking phenolic acids, is the fraction most likely to contain the alkylresorcinols identified as oestrogen receptor ligands. Labisia pumila extracts should be specified by variety, plant part, solvent and mechanism-relevant markers, and optimised against a clinically tested reference rather than generic antioxidant assays.