Herbs: The New Antibiotics?

(American Health Newswire) -- Cancer treatments may impair the immune system, which can result in life-threatening infections. Now, new research shows Indian wild plants may play a role in fighting bacterial and fungal infections in the mouths of oral cancer patients.

Bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus are becoming multi-drug resistant, so researchers are looking for remedies other than antibiotics to fight these infections. Investigators from India tested extracts from several plants used in traditional or folk medicine against microbials found in oral cancer patients' mouths. Of the 40 patients studied, 35 had compromised immune systems with severely reduced neutrophil counts. 

Results showed eight of the plants tested significantly affected the growth of organisms collected by the oral swab and pure cultures of bacteria and fungi grown in the lab. These included wild asparagus, desert date, false daisy, curry tree, castor oil plant and fenugreek. 

"Natural medicines are increasingly important in treating disease, and traditional knowledge provides a starting point in the search for plant-based medicines. Importantly, we found that the extraction process had a huge effect on both the specificity and efficacy of the plant extracts against microbes.

Nevertheless, several of the plants tested were broad spectrum antibiotics able to combat bacteria including E. coli, S. aureus and the fungi Candida and Aspergillus. Both desert date and castor oil plant were especially able to target bacteria, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which are known to be difficult to treat with conventional antibiotics." Dr Jaya Parkash Yadav, was quoted as saying.

SOURCE: Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials

Antibiotic for Asthma Sufferers

(American Health Newswire) -- People with severe asthma are more likely to have antibodies against the disease-causing bacteria Chlamydia pneumoniae than the general population and in some cases antibiotic treatment can greatly improve symptoms.

"We conclude that a subset of severe asthmatics harbor infectious C. pneumoniae in their lungs, resulting in antibody production and increased asthma severity," Eduard Drizik of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was quoted as saying.

Asthma is a chronic respiratory disease, whose causes are not completely understood, affecting over 300 million people worldwide, including almost 24 million American children and adults. There is no cure for asthma and the disease is managed by controlling disease symptoms. The recognition that asthma pathogenesis involves chronic inflammation has led to a flurry of studies exploring the prevalence of various infectious organisms in the asthmatic condition.

Having previously demonstrated an increased prevalence of C. pneumoniae in the lungs of children and adults with asthma, the researchers conducted a study designed to determine if the presence of Chlamydia-specific antibodies could predict asthma severity and if these antibody-positive patients would benefit from treatment with antibiotics.

"The data revealed a statistically significant link between Chlamydia-specific IgE antibody production and the severity of asthma," says Drizik. "Of the asthma patients analyzed, 55% had Chlamydia-specific IgE antibodies in their lungs compared to 12% of blood donor controls."

In addition, patients who were treated on the basis of asthma severity with antibiotics had significant improvements in asthma symptoms and some even experienced a complete abolition of these symptoms.

"Physicians should therefore fully explore the involvement of microbes in difficult to treat asthma cases, since there might be a cure for some types of asthma after all," said Drizik.

The Natural Pain Killer

(American Health Newswire) - For the first time scientists have accomplished a laboratory synthesis of a rare natural product isolated from the bark of a plant widely employed in traditional medicine. This advance may provide the scientific foundation to develop an effective alternative to commonly prescribed narcotic pain treatments.

The study defines a chemical means to access meaningful quantities of the rare natural product conolidine. Based on data from mouse models, the study also suggests that synthetic conolidine is a potent analgesic as effective as morphine in alleviating inflammatory and acute pain, with few, if any, side effects.

In recent years, there has been significant interest in developing alternatives to opiate-based pain medications such as morphine. While widely prescribed for pain, morphine has a number of adverse side effects that range from the unpleasant to the lethal, including nausea, chronic constipation, addiction, and breathing depression.

Once the synthesis was complete, research shifted to pharmacology for evaluation. The pharmacological assessment, performed in the laboratory of Scripps Florida Associate Professor Laura Bohn, showed that the new synthetic compound has surprisingly potent analgesic properties.

"Her pharmacological studies confirmed that while it's not an opiate, it's nearly as potent as morphine," Glenn Micalizio, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, who initiated and directed the study, was quoted as saying.

In various models of pain, the new synthetic compound performed spectacularly, suppressing acute pain and inflammatory-derived pain, two key measures of efficacy. Not only that, but the new compound passed easily through the blood-brain barrier, and was present in the brain and blood at relatively high concentrations up to four hours after injection.

"While the pain-relieving properties are encouraging, we are still challenged with elucidating the mechanism of action," Bohn said. "After pursuing more than 50 probable cellular targets, we are still left without a primary mechanism."

"The lack of side effects makes it a very good candidate for development," Bohn said. "On the other hand, if there were side effects, they might provide additional clues as to how the compound works at the molecular level."