Cancer is a malign neoplasia that is characterized by and abnormal growth of cells that can spread on the body. There are 455 cases of cancer per 100 000 man and women every year and the mortality is about 171 per 100 000 people. About 39,6% of people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lives. These numbers are scary, there are a lot of treatments, but they are expensive and some of them are not efficient within some types of cancer. There is an immense potential on using natural treatments (namely plants) since some of them have been showing promising results in laboratory both in vitro and in animal experimentation. Confirming these results there is a new hope for the thousands of people that are diagnosed every year.
Recently it was discovered a Chinese herb that has the potential to kill cancer cells in a brief period (40 days) since it has a compound called triptolide with lots of benefits to the human body. Triptolide is a diterpenoid that was isolated from a Chinese herb called Tripterygium wilfordii Hook f. and has anti-tumor activities in a wide range of solid tumors.
Tripterygium wilfordii Hook f belongs to the Celastreaceae family and has been used in Chinese medicine for centuries. It has already been used has the treatment to a big variety of autoimmune diseases and as immunosuppressant in patients with transplantations.
In this article we present you the study and the potential of this herb.
The Study
The research was conducted in the University of Minnesota’s Masonic Cancer center. Triptolide was isolated from Tripterygium wilfordii Hook f and transformed into a for soluble in water to be possible to inject. Later it was injected in mice suffering from pancreatic tumors. The mice were followed for five weeks, aside with a control group.
After the 5 weeks observation period, the mice that suffered with the pancreatic tumors were healed, with no signs of cancer or any malign cell in their bodies. After the treatment ended the mice were still followed to see if there would be a regrowth or a new cancer incidence, the results showed that all the mice were healthy and cancer free.
The vice-chairman of the research, Doctor Ashok Saluja, said “This [herb] is just unbelievable potent in killing tumor cells. You could see that every day you looked at those mice, the tumor was decreasing and decreasing, and then just gone.”.
More studies were conducted in the past to understand how this compound works. In Yale University and Columbia University researchers found that triptolide can trigger cancer cell apoptosis (programmed cell death).
Triptolide has been showing to have powerful tumor-fighting abilities, targeting leukemic cancer cell lines, increasing the efficiency of other anti-cancer agents.
This plant showed to have a good potential to treat cancer. More studies will be performed to allow its common usage has a cancer treatment in the future and possibly save thousands every year.
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