US take note of Ayurvedic remedy to lower cholesterol
Maggie Fox
A traditional remedy
approved in India for lowering cholesterol really does work, and
in a new way that might lead to the development of improved
drugs, researchers said on Thursday.
The resin of the Guggulu
tree has been used in Indian traditional medicines for more than
2,500 years, and more recently has been enlisted to fight high
cholesterol.
David Moore of the Baylor
College of medicine in Houston found that the Guggulu extract
lives up to its reputation. It really does lower cholesterol in
a number of clinical studies in the Indian literature, Moore
said.
Writing in the journal
science he said it has been used in Indian Ayurvedic medicine
since at least 600BC to treat obesity and other disorder.
Moore’s team found the
steroid guggulsterone, the active agent in the Guggulu extract
blocks the activity of the Foresaid X receptor (FXR) on cells.
FXR helps regulate cholesterol by affecting levels of bile
acids, which are produced from cholesterol and released by the
liver.
“Bile acids are the only
way that cholesterol has to get out of the body. ”Moore said
in the telephone interview.” We knew that FXR was a key
regulator of cholesterol metabolism”
Moore wanted to study FXR
more, so he looked for compounds known to lower cholesterol
whose mechanism of action was not understood.” I spent a lot
of time clicking around the internet, ”he said .He found
guggulu terone, along with niacin – a B vitamin regularly
prescribed for cholesterol patients – and red wine .Red wine
and Niacin were not involve strongly enough with FXR to interest
him, but gugulipid , available in health food stores in the
United states, was.
Tests in mice showed
guggulu extract lowers cholesterol by blocking the effects of
FXR. “We put mice on a high cholesterol diet for a week and
measured cholesterol levels in the liver,” Said Moore, who
worked with colleagues at the University of Texas southwestern
Medical Center in Dallas.
“In Normal mice you feed
them cholesterol and the cholesterol level in the liver goes up,
but if you feed them cholesterol and give them guggulsterone at
the same time, the levels stay the same, he said. Mice bred to
lack FXR did not respond to guggulu. Moore , who with colleagues
has set up a small bio-technology company called X-captor
therapeutics inc in San Diego, California ,said it might be
possible to more specifically target FXR with a drug. The
company has patented FXR. As a pharmaceutical company you are
not going to be interested in producing something that is
better,” Moore said. The company is based on the idea that
nuclear receptors like FXR and others are good targets for
identifying new drugs.
Moore, who takes statin
drugs to lower his own cholesterol, tried guggulu. I was curious
about whether it would work with statins, which I was already
taking .It dropped my total serum cholesterol by 10 percent,
“he said .”But we had some evidence that it might have
effects on the activity of other drugs and I stopped taking
it.”
Other claims for gugulipid
are that it can help you lose weight by increasing metabolism. I
was disappointed there,” Said Moore,” It did not affect my
weight.”
Source : Indian Express Mumbai
Washington 2nd May,2002
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