Disease relevance of Phytotherapy

• Efficacy of traditional Chinese herbal therapy in vitro. A model system for atopic eczema: inhibition of CD23 expression on blood monocytes [1].
• This cohort study examined the impact of phytotherapy (PT; traditional herbs) on neuropsychiatric aspects of HIV disease progression to antibody immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), CD4 counts, and viral load in adult patients in Harare, Zimbabwe. This is a community-based and nonintervention cohort study [2].
• Bronchial asthma: information on phytotherapy with essential fatty acids. Interactions between essential fatty acids and steroid hormones [3].
• METHODS: Men diagnosed with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (National Institutes of Health [NIH] criteria) who were refractory to standard therapy (antibiotics, alpha-blockers, anti-inflammatories, phytotherapy) were referred for acupuncture therapy [4].

High impact information on Phytotherapy

• Treatment with therapeutic agents that decrease oxidative stress, such as antibiotics and antioxidant phytotherapy, may function at least partially by increasing beta-endorphin and decreasing prostaglandin E2 [5].
• RESULTS: The efficacy of tamsulosin was largely unaffected by age or previous phytotherapy; in patients with severe symptoms, the efficacy was at least as large as in those with mild or moderate symptoms [6].
• These treatments include phytotherapy (quercetin, bee pollen) and physical therapy [7].
• Based on present knowledge, resveratrol appears to be a promising bioactive natural molecule with potential applications in phytotherapy, pharmacology or in nutriprotection (nutraceutic food) area [8].
• The Traditional Oriental Medicine Database (TradiMed 2000 DB) is a unique database of traditional Oriental herbal therapy containing a variety of information such as formulae, chemical information on ingredients, botanical information on herbal materials, and a dictionary of disease classification (TOM and Western classification) [9].

Associations of Phytotherapy with chemical compounds

• Women who had used herbal therapy in the past had, on average, 25% higher concentrations of total and free testosterone than women who had never used these herbal therapies (p = 0.03 and p = 0.004, respectively) [10].
• Patients were randomly assigned either to the naftopidil group, which was treated with the alpha-blocker naftopidil (50-75 mg daily, 36 patients), or the eviprostat group, which was treated with phytotherapy (six tablets of eviprostat daily, 13 patients) [11].

Gene context of Phytotherapy

• Review on phytotherapy in epilepsy [12].
• A variety of oral treatments is available, including alpha-adrenoceptor antagonists (alpha-blockers), 5alpha reductase inhibitors, aromatase inhibitors and phytotherapy [13].
• Herbal therapy for treating rheumatoid arthritis [14].
• METHODS: This review focuses on studies with clearly defined mistletoe extracts standardised in terms of mistletoe lectins I, II, and III (calculated as mistletoe lectin I, ML I) which belong to the category of rational phytotherapy [15].
• As the GCP standards have mainly been set for innovative drugs, there is a certain danger that these criteria could not be fulfilled by medicines used in phytotherapy [16].

References