Crackdown on deadly Chinese imports

DEADLY fake medicines, including tablets made with yellow road paint and unhygienic pregnancy testing kits, are part of a tide of counterfeit goods from China posing a danger to health, consumers were warned yesterday.

Heart pills coated with furniture polish and bottles of bogus shampoo which caused skin damage were among five million items seized by customs officials at ports, including those in Scotland, in the past year.

The EU Tax and Customs Commissioner, Laszlo Kovacs, said the fakes, which cost European Union countries £336 million a year, were "a growing danger for the health and safety and lives of our citizens".

He said counterfeit goods no longer involve imitation luxury watches, but condoms and HIV and pregnancy testing kits manufactured under unhygienic conditions.


Source - Scotsman

Anti-HIV drug from rainforest almost lost before its discovery

Rainforest plants have long been recognized for their potential to provide healing compounds. Indigenous peoples of the rainforest have used medicinal plants for treating a wide variety of health conditions while western pharmacologists have derived a number of drugs from such plants.

However, as forests around the world continue to fall -- the Amazon alone has lost more than 200,000 miles of forest since the 1970s -- there is a real risk that pharmaceutically-useful plants will disappear before they are examined for their chemical properties. Increasingly, it is becoming a race against time to collect and screen plants before their native habitats are destroyed. One near miss occurred recently with a compound that has shown significant anti-HIV effects, Calanolide A.

Calanolide A is derived from Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum, an exceedingly rare member of the Guttiferae or mangosteen family. Samples of Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum were first collected in 1987 on an National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored expedition in Sarawak, Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Once scientists determined that Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum showed activity against HIV, researchers returned to the original kerangas forest near Lundu (Sarawak, Malaysia) to gather more plant matter for isolating the active compound. The tree was gone -- likely felled by locals for fuelwood or building material. The disappearance of the tree lead to mad search by botanists for further specimen. Good news finally came from the Singapore Botanic Garden which had several plants collected by the British over 100 years earlier. Sarawak banned the felling and export of Calophyllum shortly thereafter.

Source: Mongabay.com

Anti-HIV drug from rainforest almost lost before its discovery

Rainforest plants have long been recognized for their potential to provide healing compounds. Indigenous peoples of the rainforest have used medicinal plants for treating a wide variety of health conditions while western pharmacologists have derived a number of drugs from such plants.

However, as forests around the world continue to fall -- the Amazon alone has lost more than 200,000 miles of forest since the 1970s -- there is a real risk that pharmaceutically-useful plants will disappear before they are examined for their chemical properties. Increasingly, it is becoming a race against time to collect and screen plants before their native habitats are destroyed. One near miss occurred recently with a compound that has shown significant anti-HIV effects, Calanolide A.

Calanolide A is derived from Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum, an exceedingly rare member of the Guttiferae or mangosteen family. Samples of Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum were first collected in 1987 on an National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored expedition in Sarawak, Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Once scientists determined that Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum showed activity against HIV, researchers returned to the original kerangas forest near Lundu (Sarawak, Malaysia) to gather more plant matter for isolating the active compound. The tree was gone -- likely felled by locals for fuelwood or building material. The disappearance of the tree lead to mad search by botanists for further specimen. Good news finally came from the Singapore Botanic Garden which had several plants collected by the British over 100 years earlier. Sarawak banned the felling and export of Calophyllum shortly thereafter.

Source: Mongabay.com

Popular 'cold cure' herbs useless, study finds

MILLIONS swear by it, but according to a new study, the herbal remedy echinacea does nothing at all to help treat the common cold.

As part of the research, which took place in America, 399 healthy patients were given either extracts from an echinacea plant or a dummy preparation which did not contain any of the plant.

The patients were then exposed to the common cold virus and their symptoms recorded.

Scientists found patients who took an echinacea plant extract fared no better than those who took a dummy treatment.

Source - Western Mail

Cranberries 'could treat herpes'

Cranberries may be an effective treatment for the herpes virus, researchers claim.
The berry is known to be effective in treating bladder conditions.

But experts at the Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan say in Chemistry and Industry they could also treat the cold sores and genital herpes virus.

However UK experts said there was not enough evidence to suggest people should eat or drink cranberries to treat herpes.

Source BBC News

Multivitamins 'slow HIV progress'

Taking multivitamins may help stop HIV infection developing into full-blown Aids, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in the US say.

In a six-year study, 538 African women with HIV were given a daily supplement of a multivitamin or a dummy pill.

Of the 267 taking dummy pills, 12% developed Aids compared with 7% of the 271 on a multivitamin pill.

The 271 also suffered fewer late-stage complications, the researchers told the New England Journal of Medicine.

They said their findings suggested vitamin supplements could be given to people with HIV in the developing world to delay the need to start treating them with Aids drugs.

Source BBC News

Green tea extract may fight HIV

Green tea could form the basis of a new generation of HIV drugs, say experts.

Scientists in Japan have found a component of green tea can stop HIV from binding to healthy immune cells, which is how the virus spreads.

Their laboratory tests suggest a chemical called Epigallocatechin Gallate (EGCG) protects cells.

Writing in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the scientists said the discovery could lead to new treatments to fight the disease.

Source BBC News

Irish moss may have role in protecting against HIV

Next month in Bangkok at an international AIDS conference, the world will hear about a new product offering women a way to protect themselves.

The topical treatment, an HIV blocking agent, is made with carrageenan. The registered name of the still-experimental vaginal gel is Carraguard.

The primary source of carrageenan is the Irish moss found in Nova Scotia's rich seaweed beds. Three-quarters of the world's Irish moss comes from the Maritime provinces, where it's harvested from the wild.

The product is called a microbicide - although it doesn't kill microbes but rather prevents infection by binding to the surface of the virus, preventing the microbes from adhering to nearby cells and infecting them.

Source - Novaserve Magazine

Herb treatment for herpes

A common herb may provide a new and effective treatment for the sexually transmitted infection herpes.

Scientists have successfully used an agent derived from the herb, Prunella vulgaris aka (self heal, heal all, common self heal), to prevent the disease in animals.

The herb, commonly found in Britain, Europe, China and North America, has been used in the past to treat sores in the mouth and throat.

There is also some evidence that it has been used as a crude anti-cancer drug and to lower high blood pressure.

Dr Song Lee and his colleagues from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, extracted a compound from the plant.

This was then added to a cream and tested on mice and guinea pigs who had been infected with two types of the herpes simplex virus.

Use of the cream significantly cut the death rate among mice, and the development of skin lesions in guinea pigs.

Source BBC News

Herb 'as effective as antidepressants'

The herb St John's wort is as effective as standard antidepressant therapy, according to a major research trial.

They found that an extract of the herb, known technically as Hypericum perforatum, was as effective at easing the symptoms of depression as the commonly used drug imipramine.

Scientists from the University of Giessen in Germany, are recommending that the herb should be considered as a first line treatment for patients with mild to moderate depression.
Britons spend around £5m a year on St John's wort and an estimated two million people have tried it.

However, the use of the herb to treat depression has been controversial.

The Medicines Control Agency (MCA) in the UK issued a warning earlier this year advising that the herb should not be used by women taking the contraceptive pill and patients on HIV, depression and migraine treatments.

Source BBC News

Hunting the best herbs

Once upon a time, folk wisdom dictated the harvesting of certain herbs under the light of a full moon - now technology is taking over with the development of handheld devices that measure the potency of the plant in the field.

The old tales were based on the true phenomenon that plants with medicinal effects have maximum potency at particular times. Modern growers of plants which contain compounds beneficial to health also need to know when this is - if their products are to be effective.

Paul LaChance, Executive Director of the Nutraceuticals Institute at Rutgers University, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that his team was developing handheld bioassay devices that could measure the levels of a bioactive compound in just 20 minutes.

Perfect moment

"We've been developing rapid amino assays. With these, a farmer can know where in the field, what part of the plant and when best to pick it," he said.

"It also means he gets a better yield of his crop and a better price for it."

The key part, according to Dr LaChance, is that: "You have to agree on the biomarker - the chemical which signifies the presence of the active ingredient."

Bamboo to blueberry

The team is developing a number of bioassays. One spots the active ingredient of blueberries: "Blueberries have similar properties as cranberries in reducing urinary tract infections."

Another identifies a compound in bamboo shoots believed to lower blood cholesterol.

Some of the bioassays have other purposes such as the one that detects the presence of a virus in blueberry plants.

"It can tell you before the plant flowers - which is the way it is identified now - which plants have the problem and where," he said.

Source BBC News