Botanical/Herbal Medicines
terrasig | November 19, 2007As we approach 100,000 visitors since joining ScienceBlogs I am amazed to still be getting 500-700 visits per month at the old home of Terra Sigillata, all without any promotion or new posts. The most-visited of the old posts is the following which appeared originally on 21 February 2006.
Much of humankind's experience with pharmacologically-active natural products has been through the mind-altering effects of plants used in religious ceremonies.
Today [21 Feb 2006], the US Supreme Court upheld a decision to permit a New Mexico sect of a Brazilian religious order to continue using an…
terrasig | November 16, 2007You just never know - some weeks you don't get The Friday Fermentable; other weeks you get two posts.
Well, several readers gave me the heads up this week about an NPR story about resveratrol supplements. You may remember that this is the chemical present in red wine that kills cancer cells in culture and, as we discussed here, extends the lifespan in yeast when used at extremely high concentrations.
Turns out that our analytical chemistry colleagues at ConsumerLab.com have revealed that a great many resveratrol supplements don't even come close to having the labeled amounts of the chemical…
terrasig | November 7, 2007Orac's recent post, A Real Death By Homeopathy, led me to dig through the archives at my old blog and reprint one of my first posts, this one from 6 January 2006. As a natural products researcher, I often see homeopathy associated with herbal medicines, the latter of which has often been the source of beneficial pharmaceuticals. In sharp contrast, homeopathy is based on a faulty 19th century principle that is the direct opposite of dose-response pharmacology and I intended to comment briefly on the distinction, as stimulated by a misleading picture on the cover of one of my favorite print…
terrasig | October 31, 2007Welcome, Reader: This post was updated on Halloween 2009 to remedy linkrot and add an interesting tidbit on the famous Macbeth passage. As it is likely you ended up here via a search engine, click here to go to the updated post.
Have you ever wondered, perhaps on 31 October, why witches are depicted as riding brooms?
The answer is alluded to by Karmen Franklin at Chaotic Utopia in her post as to why witches need to know their plant biology.
The excerpts I'm about to give you come from a superb and accessible pharmacology text entitled, "Murder, Magic, and Medicine," by John Mann, host of the…
terrasig | October 12, 2007Here's a quick note that might belong best in Orac's weekly feature, Your Friday Dose of Woo.
The Scientist reports today on a report released by the UK-based group of scientists called Sense About Science. The group has been challenging dietary supplement manufacturers about their scientific-sounding advertising claims by calling the companies up and questioning their "science." Their statement of intent stays away from the fact that companies are making money on these products but, instead, focuses on the two standards for science that seem to operate in our societies:
We are fed up with…
terrasig | October 4, 2007...but a chemically-altered analog derived from feverfew appears to have anticancer activity against leukemia stem cells. Researchers at the University of Rochester reported this week in the journal, Blood, that dimethylaminoparthenolide (DMAPT) has selective action against acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
It'll be a couple days before I can get to reading the original paper. However, do not let anyone tell you that feverfew can treat cancer. From the press release, it appears that the major compound in feverfew, called parthenolide, was chemically modified to create DMAPT, thereby…
terrasig | September 19, 2007A few days ago, I posted about a 1 September Cancer Research paper showing that a muscadine grape skin extract (MSKE) lacking resveratrol had activity in killing prostate cancer cells. I've finally had a chance to look at the paper. The study was very well-done by Dr Jeffrey Green's group at the US National Cancer Institute with colleagues at Georgia, Texas, USDA, and George Washington University. The studies showed that the grape skin extract (at 10-20 μg/mL) had cytotoxic activity against progressively tumorigenic prostate cell lines but had no effect on normal prostatic epithelial cells…
terrasig | September 15, 2007[This post appeared originally at my Blogspot site on 20 December 2005 to describe my rationale for the name of this blog. With today's traffic from the Daily Kos, I thought it would be useful to new readers to know our story here. FYFI, here is why I chose the pseudonym Abel Pharmboy. - APB]
If you Google, "Terra Sigillata," you'll get a number of hits for various clay pottery recipes. Very complicated stuff, requiring the use of a deflocculant to separate out large clay particles from the small ones. Terra sig, as it is known among pottery hipsters, is then used to coat finished pieces…
terrasig | September 9, 2007Yes, you have heard this before: another company selling erectile dysfunction dietary supplements has been nailed by the US FDA for adulteration of their product with prescription drugs used for erectile dysfunction.
From the FDA (full press release here):
Bodee LLC, Inc., issued a nationwide recall of Zencore Tabs, a product marketed as a dietary supplement, because it contains undeclared ingredients. FDA laboratory analysis of Zencore Tabs found that the product contains aminotadalafil, an analog of tadalafil, and sildenafil, both of which are active ingredients of FDA-approved drugs used…
terrasig | September 4, 2007A press release came in from the US NIH before the weekend noting that NCI's Dr Jeffrey Green has identified potential anticancer activities from a grape skin extract that is not dependent on the presence of the well-known compound, resveratrol. The report is to appear in the 1 September issue of Cancer Research, but the article is not yet online.
Green's group investigated a skin extract from muscadine grapes (Vitis rotundifolia) that was apparently nearly devoid of resveratrol but contained high levels of compunds called anthocyanins (they called it MSKE for "muscadine skin extract"). The…
terrasig | August 6, 2007Back in June, we reported on several botanical/non-botanical supplement studies presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting. One was a Mayo Clinic study of a proprietary Wisconsin-grown ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) extract showing positive effects of the preparation in relieving cancer-related fatigue. The study authors were very careful to note this study was conducted specifically with Wisconsin-sourced product.
From my own post:
Note that the extract can't be compared to anything on the market since it was made for the study from a single source of Wisconsin…
terrasig | July 30, 2007The author of Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry, Dan Hurley, has a three-minute video editorial at Medscape today.
I must admit to being a little ambivalent about his message that, "Evidence-based medicine is the rallying cry of a generation of physicians. So why do so many physicians ignore the evidence when it comes to dietary supplements?"
My issue is that Hurley lumps multivitamins together with herbal supplements. Certainly, many herbal supplements have been failures in double-blind clinical trials (as I reposted earlier today…
terrasig | July 30, 2007This post appeared originally on 8 Feb 2006 at the old site for this blog. A frequent reader and commenter, Joe, suggested that I repost it here as it illustrates many common problems with clinical trials of botanical medicines.
You'd think the funding folks would learn at the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). But, not as evidenced by the report in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine detailing the lack of efficacy of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) extract in the treatment of benign prostatic hypertrophy.
Yet another well-designed double-blind,…
terrasig | July 25, 2007An article in the most recent issue of Annals of Pharmacotherapy concludes that the vast majority of known cases of herbal medicine interactions with drugs go unreported. Researchers at the University of Alberta, University of Toronto, and Health Canada surveyed 132 pharmacists. While 47% of pharmacists had identified an herb-drug interaction, only 2 (1.5%) reported their cases to Health Canada.
But, according to the study authors, "19% of pharmacists said they had reported adverse events from mixing prescription and non-prescription drugs."
Why do pharmacists feel that reporting herb-…
terrasig | July 3, 2007For the rest of July, Nature Chemical Biology is offering free access to about ten articles on research and training in natural products.
Investigations into natural products have recently regained prominence with the increasing understanding of their biological significance and increasing recognition of the origin and function of their structural diversity. This issue highlights some of the major questions and advances in natural products research, from recent synthetic approaches to access complicated natural products to a new educational program which utilizes natural products as a basis…
terrasig | June 3, 2007Yesterday morning's press release from the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting included discussion of three abstracts on complementary therapies being tested in cancer and cancer-related indications. The highlights on the major news services are that 1) a shark cartilage extract failed to provide survival benefit in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, 2) an American ginseng extract reduced cancer-related fatigue, and 3) flaxseed slows prostate cancer growth.
Just a few comments, mostly on the positive results, that didn't make it into mainstream media reports:
The…
terrasig | May 29, 2007We've discussed previously the use of herbal extracts from black cohosh (Actea racemosa) for relief from hot flashes and other vasomotor symptoms of menopause and perimenopause. A clinical trial in Annals of Internal Medicine last December, showed that one black cohosh extract was no better than placebo for this indication. Lack of efficacy has been shown in other settings yet black cohosh remains one of the most popular herbal products in North America.
Regardless of whether it works, black cohosh has been investigated by Health Canada for its link to rare but serious cases of liver damage…
terrasig | April 25, 2007A proprietary extract of black cohosh (Actea racemosa) sold in the US and Europe as Remifemin has long been purported as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy in menopause and perimenopause. Several trials have questioned the efficacy of this herb (one discussed on this blog) and the NIH has been concerned about sporadic reports of liver toxicity associated with some preparations of the herb. In the literature, black cohosh has been described in various instances as a phytoestrogen, an antiestrogen, an estrogen-receptor modulator, or devoid of any estrogenic activity. So, even I am…
terrasig | April 7, 2007From a news release by the University of California at Davis:
The new study, published in this month's issue of Environmental Health Perspectives - available online at www.ehponline.org - was prompted by the case of a 54-year-old woman who was seen at the UCD Occupational Medicine Clinic following a two-year history of worsening hair loss, fatigue and memory loss.
Seafood is our primary source of arsenic in the food supply and we all have detectable arsenic in our blood after a plate of oysters. But this case was particularly disturbing:
Over a period of several months, the woman's short-…
terrasig | March 25, 2007I noted just last week the latest review by Drs Newman and Cragg citing that nature remains the source of 70% of prescription drugs. Wall Street Journal medical reporter Ron Winslow took his turn yesterday contributing to the paper's new HealthBlog from New Orleans, site of the American College of Cardiology meeting.
Turns out that a semi-synthetic analog of a compound derived from the bark of Australian magnolia may enhance anti-clotting therapy following stent implants without increasing bleeding risks. The parent molecule and the analog tested in this trial act as antagonists, or…