Chinese Medicine Offers Help for IBS

[HysteryDiagnosis]

May all the altmed is trash posters please pile on.


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20584-chinese-medicine-offers-new-parkinsons-treatments.html
Herbs for the gut

Meanwhile, Zhaoxiang Bian, also at Hong Kong Baptist University, is developing a drug called JCM-16021 for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) using seven herbal plants and based on a Chinese formulation called tong xie yao fang, used to treat IBS since the 1300s.

IBS affects up to 20 per cent of people, causing abdominal pain, constipation and diarrhoea. "They feel really rotten, and it's sufficiently severe for people to take time off work," says John Furness at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Stress management can help symptoms, but there is no effective medicine to treat it.

In 2007, Bian gave 80 people with IBS either JCM-16021 with Holopon – a drug that interrupts nerve impulses in the parasympathetic nervous system responsible for digestion – or Holopon alone. After eight weeks, 52 per cent of those given JCM-16021 with Holopon reported reduced IBS symptoms, compared with 32 per cent of those given Holopon alone.

IBS is partly caused by high levels of serotonin in the gut. Last year, Bian found that giving JCM-16021 to rats with IBS-like symptoms broke down serotonin in their bowel faster than normal, reducing their discomfort.

[Mnemosyne]

1. K&R n/t

[Odin2005]

2. Yay, lets kill more tigers and rhinos for their body parts to use in Chinese medicine!!!

:sarcasm:

[trotsky]

3. And should this research pan out, and the precise chemicals isolated...

will the "pharma is trash" posters then turn around and pile on because the pharmaceutical companies found a way to mass-produce the pertinent compounds, make them shelf-stable, and guarantee their potency - WITHOUT having to endanger plants or animals to obtain them?