Anonymous ID: 2dea2d May 27, 2022, 12:09 p.m. No.136229   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>6267 >>6294 >>6382 >>6388

>>136228

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/rediscovered-native-american-remedy-kills-poxvirus/3003420.article

https://archive.ph/2iQNi

 

Rediscovered Native American remedy (Sarracenia purpurea) kills poxvirus

 

Herbal medicine used to treat smallpox in the 19th century found to halt viral replication in vitro

 

An old herbal remedy for treating smallpox that is thought to have been used by native Americans in the late 1800s has been rediscovered and found to kill the poxvirus. Smallpox has been eradicated, but the finding offers a possible treatment for poxvirus in the unlikely event of a bioterror attack or increased incidence of similar poxviruses such as monkey pox.

 

Smallpox ravaged human populations for thousands of years, but in 1796 Edward Jenner discovered that exposure to cowpox lesions could provide immunity to smallpox. This led to the creation of the first vaccine for a disease. It took some time, but in 1979 the World Health Organization officially declared that smallpox had been eradicated.

 

Historical sources suggest that in the 1800s, when smallpox still posed a serious threat, the Micmac native Americans of Nova Scotia treated the disease using a botanical infusion derived from the insectivorous plant Sarracenia purpurea, a species of pitcher plant.

 

Now, Jeffrey Langland at Arizona State University in Tempe, US, and colleagues have conducted in vitro experiments with the herbal extract and found it inhibits replication of the variola virus, the causative agent behind smallpox.

 

Although, natural smallpox no longer poses a health threat, there is a remote possibility that unstable states or terrorist groups could have acquired stocks of the virus following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had developed smallpox as a biological warfare agent.

 

Vaccinations are still administered to at risk groups including researchers working with poxviruses and members of the US military who could potentially be exposed to the virus through biological warfare. But since the risk is so low for populations at large, it is hard to justify vaccinating everyone, particularly because the vaccine can have serious side effects. Developing therapies is therefore important in order to treat people if a bioterror event does occur.

 

’There is much scepticism on herbal medicine but what our results illustrate conclusively is that this herb is able to kill the virus and we can actually demonstrate how it kills the virus,’ says Langland. ’It takes this herb out of the realm of folklore, and into the area of true scientific evidence.’

 

The team made extracts of S. purpurea and found that it was highly effective at inhibiting the replication of the virus in rabbit kidney cells. They then looked at the replication cycle of the virus and found that the herb inhibits mRNA synthesis, halting production of proteins vital for replication. ’Other drugs are being developed against smallpox, but S. purpurea is the only known therapy that will target the virus at this point in the replication cycle,’ says Langland.

 

’The extract blocks early transcription appearing to have a distinct mechanism of action from that of two other antivirals currently in clinical trials,’ says Mark Buller, a virologist at Saint Louis University, Missouri, US. ’The results are very compelling, and support the need to further evaluate the purified active ingredient in small animal studies.’

 

’With smallpox, it is obviously impossible to see if this herb is effective in the human body unless a bioterror release of the virus occurs,’ says Langland. ’We are in the process of doing animal studies to confirm our results in at least this type of whole animal system.’

Anonymous ID: 2dea2d May 27, 2022, 12:14 p.m. No.136230   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>6267 >>6294 >>6382 >>6388

>>136228

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22427855/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0032610

https://archive.ph/rMe9H

 

In Vitro Characterization of a Nineteenth-Century Therapy (Sarracenia purpurea) for Smallpox

 

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, smallpox ravaged through the United States and Canada. At this time, a botanical preparation, derived from the carnivorous plant Sarracenia purpurea, was proclaimed as being a successful therapy for smallpox infections. The work described characterizes the antipoxvirus activity associated with this botanical extract against vaccinia virus, monkeypox virus and variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox. Our work demonstrates the in vitro characterization of Sarracenia purpurea as the first effective inhibitor of poxvirus replication at the level of early viral transcription. With the renewed threat of poxvirus-related infections, our results indicate Sarracenia purpurea may act as another defensive measure against Orthopoxvirus infections.

 

Discussion

Here we report on the in vitro characterization of antipoxvirus activity associated with an S. purpurea extract which was historically reported to prevent symptoms associated with a smallpox infection [3], [4], [6], [7], [10], [12].

During the 1800's, patients were treated with S. purpurea after the symptoms for smallpox had already appeared and as a preventive during epidemics.

Historical reports stated that“the effects were so…speedy and beneficial as to leave no doubt that they were due to the Sarracenia”[8].

“The disease continued very severe until (S. purpurea) was administered, and became entirely changed in its severity after the administration…, the effect being due to (S. purpurea) alone”[1].

In this study, we demonstrated that S. purpurea extracts were able to effectively inhibit viral replication and the viral-induced cytopathic effects of various Orthopoxviruses.The data supports that S. purpurea effectively inhibited MPXV and VARV replication similarly to VACV, and points to the relevance of using VACV as a model of the more virulent MPXV and VARV. At doses where virus replication was inhibited, little to no cellular toxicity was observed.

Anonymous ID: 2dea2d May 27, 2022, 12:18 p.m. No.136232   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>6267 >>6294 >>6382 >>6388

>>136228

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76151-w

https://archive.ph/wvqnU

Anti-herpes virus activity of the carnivorous botanical, Sarracenia purpurea

 

Abstract

Herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1), one of the most widely spread human viruses in the Herpesviridae family, causes herpes labialis (cold sores) and keratitis (inflammation of the cornea). Conventional treatment for HSV-1 infection includes pharmaceutical drugs, such as acyclovir and docosonal, which are efficacious but maintain the potential for the development of viral drug resistance. Extracts from the carnivorous pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea, have previously been shown to inhibit the replication of HSV-1. In this study, we demonstrate that S. purpurea extracts can inhibit the replication of HSV-1 by two distinct mechanisms of action. These extracts directly inhibit extracellular virions or viral attachment to the human host cell as well as inhibiting the expression of viral immediate-early, early and late genes when added at various times post-infection. This botanical has previously been shown to inhibit the replication of poxviruses through the inhibition of early viral gene transcription. These results support a broader anti-viral activity of S. purpurea extracts against both pox and herpes viruses.

Anonymous ID: 2dea2d May 27, 2022, 12:19 p.m. No.136233   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>6267 >>6294 >>6382 >>6388

>>136228

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/t-magazine/plants-medicine-doctrine-of-signatures.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20201118122714/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/t-magazine/plants-medicine-doctrine-of-signatures.html

 

Revisiting an Ancient Theory of Herbalism

 

In our own era of mysterious diseases, the supposition that some plants might cure the human organs they most resemble is surfacing once more.

 

HOW, I HAVE often wondered, did people first discover the highly specific applications of particular plants and herbs? That ginseng improves energy, say, or that ginger alleviates nausea, or that horsetail, which contains silica, might help hair to grow? One theory, possibly apocryphal and certainly much maligned by modern medicine, is that the physical characteristics of plants themselves provided clues as to how they might be used. This notion, known among scholars of ethnobotany and practitioners of herbal medicine as the doctrine of signatures, holds that plants have a “signature” — color, texture, shape, scent, even the environment in which they grow — that resembles the body parts and diseases they heal. Thus bloodroot, or Sanguinaria canadensis, whose roots and rhizomes secrete a red sap when cut, was once thought to heal blood disorders and hasten wound healing. And eyebright, or euphrasia, whose flowers resemble the human eye (or rather, with its yellow dots and purple stripes, a jaundiced, bloodshot one), has for centuries been used to treat ocular ailments, like conjunctivitis. (In German, eyebright is called Augentrost, or “consolation of the eyes.”) Signatures, in other words, made it easy to divine a plant’s medicinal properties. Form reveals function; function echoes form.

 

It’s difficult to say when and where the doctrine of signatures originated; the concept is an ancient one and has been observed across numerous cultures and healing traditions. It is a hallmark of traditional Chinese medicine and Native American herbalism, and appears in Indian Ayurveda and African herbalism, too. It’s first mentioned in the writings of classical antiquity, including those of the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder. According to the 16th-century Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta, Dioscorides, the first-century A.D. Greek physician, wrote in his famous five-volume pharmacopoeia of plants and their medicines, “De Materia Medica”: “The Herb Scorpius resembleth the tail of the Scorpion, and is good against his bitings.” In her 2012 book, “The Language of Plants: A Guide to the Doctrine of Signatures,” the herbalist and naturopathic practitioner Julia Graves notes, “Each culture has imbued this art with its own flavor, and each epoch added its own twist.”

 

The idea gained traction in medieval Europe, particularly among Christians, who gave it theological underpinnings. Paracelsus, the 16th-century Swiss physician, alchemist and philosopher, was one of its biggest advocates, writing, as though about a divinely orchestrated scavenger hunt, “God does not want things to stay hidden, which He created for mankind’s benefit and which He gave man as his property into his hand. … And even though He Himself hid it, so did He mark upon it outer, visible signs, that are special marks.” In the 17th century, Jakob Böhme, a cobbler turned Christian mystic, popularized the doctrine when he published a book-length treatise on it, “The Signature of All Things” (1621), while in England, the herbalist and physician Nicholas Culpeper and the botanist William Cole soon wrote seminal books of their own. Together, these works helped codify the anthropocentric idea that God had given humans hints about nature’s therapeutic gifts, and it was up to us to find and use them. So ubiquitous did this notion become in the West that it even found its way into literature: In Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (1667), the Archangel Michael purges Adam’s eye (his “visual nerve”) with euphrasia to cure it of the “filme” caused by eating the “false fruit” of temptation.

 

WITH THE ADVENT of modern medicine, the doctrine eventually fell out of favor, and nowadays is viewed mostly as pseudoscience. Detractors point out the obvious: It can be dangerous to medicate oneself this way — bloodroot’s efficacy is strongly contested, for example, and although it is sometimes used by herbal types to treat cancer, it can be toxic in large doses. There’s also the inherent subjectivity of the enterprise. Your heart-shaped leaf may be, to my eye, a kidney-shaped one. And of course almost all herbs have myriad uses, not merely those that correspond to their primary signatures. Horsetail not only promotes hair health, as its long, coarse, taillike stalks might suggest, but is also used for bone healing. Purslane, which the Cherokee used as a vermifuge because its scarlet stalks looked vaguely wormlike, is also a powerful antioxidant.

 

Yet herbalists today still subscribe to the concept, in part because many of the plants are effective in precisely the way their signatures indicate. Lungwort, with its spotty leaves that look like lung tissue, is often used for respiratory issues; dandelion, thought to help jaundice and other hepatic ailments because of its bright yellow color, really does protect the liver; and medicinal mushrooms that bear a resemblance to tumors have been shown in studies to slow their growth. In his oft-cited 2007 paper, “Doctrine of Signatures: An Explanation of Medicinal Plant Discovery or Dissemination of Knowledge,” the ethnobotanist Bradley C. Bennett writes that the doctrine might not have been entirely baseless. Although he is deeply skeptical of the notion that the doctrine was used to discover remedies, particularly with respect to a plant’s visual or superficial aspects, he writes that signatures can also encompass “olfactory or gustatory clues,” and that “potent odors and strong tastes” are fairly reliable indicators that a plant will have bioactive compounds. He also argues that rather than leading to the discovery of medicinal properties, plant signatures were instead used to remember those that had already been uncovered — the signature as a mnemonic device. Such a practice would have been especially useful in nonliterate societies where knowledge was transmitted orally. “Plants that are both efficacious and easy to remember,” the ethnobotanist and medical anthropologist Glenn H. Shepard Jr. has written, were more likely to endure in a culture over time.

 

But those who work with plants find even this idea — the signature as bookmark, if you will — too reductive. A plant is more than the sum of its parts, and certainly more than the sum of its parts that resemble the human body. Indeed, traditional cultures have long revered plants and herbs as teachers and guides, and even today, not only herbalists and naturopaths but also a new generation of florists have been inspired by the principles of the doctrine, viewing it as a means of hearing what nature has to say, of decoding her secrets. This notion feels particularly relevant in this strange, claustrophobic moment when many of us find that our only respite is the outdoors. As anyone who has ever taken psilocybin mushrooms knows, plants are mysterious beings with an intelligence of their own: They do have messages for humans, but they also don’t exist purely for our use. The Brooklyn-based floral artist Joshua Werber tells me that he incorporates these notions visually and metaphorically in his work, and that his plants, which he grows in his backyard garden in Brooklyn, let him know what they want. “We’re in dialogue,” he explains, “I’m listening to them.” The doctrine of signatures, those who believe in it might argue, is one way that plants make themselves heard.