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When you google multiple sclerosis and turmeric, over 300,000 results pop up, including this lead description (sourced from turmericforhealth.com):
"Curcumin is the key active ingredient in turmeric. Initial studies have found that curcumin could block progress of MS. In laboratory tests, mice where bred with illness resembling multiple sclerosis symptoms called EAE – experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis."
There's just one problem. It's apparently BS. Based on all available scientific evidence—thousands of research papers and over a hundred clinical trials—there's zero evidence curcumin has any medical benefit, say researchers in a groundbreaking analysis.
From the latest issue of Nature....
Well, at least we at ActiveMSers are reading this. - D
"Curcumin is the key active ingredient in turmeric. Initial studies have found that curcumin could block progress of MS. In laboratory tests, mice where bred with illness resembling multiple sclerosis symptoms called EAE – experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis."
There's just one problem. It's apparently BS. Based on all available scientific evidence—thousands of research papers and over a hundred clinical trials—there's zero evidence curcumin has any medical benefit, say researchers in a groundbreaking analysis.
From the latest issue of Nature....
Deceptive curcumin offers cautionary tale for chemists
Spice extract dupes assays and leads some drug hunters astray.
By Monya Baker
11 January 2017, Nature
Inside the golden-yellow spice turmeric lurks a chemical deceiver: curcumin, a molecule that is widely touted as having medicinal activity, but which also gives false signals in drug screening tests. For years, chemists have urged caution about curcumin and other compounds that can mislead naive drug hunters.*
Now, in an attempt to stem a continuing flow of muddled research, scientists have published the most comprehensive critical review yet of curcumin*—*concluding that there’s no evidence it has any specific therapeutic benefits, despite thousands of research papers and more than 120 clinical trials. The scientists hope that their report will prevent further wasted research and alert the unwary to the possibility that chemicals may often show up as ‘hits’ in drug screens, but be unlikely to yield a drug.
“Curcumin is a cautionary tale,” says Michael Walters, a medicinal chemist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and lead author of the review (K.*M.*Nelson et*al. J.*Med. Chem. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.6b00975 2017), published on 11*January.
...Walters isn’t confident that his report will stop poorly conducted research. “The people who should be reading this probably won’t,” he says.
FULL ARTICLE IN NATURE: http://www.nature.com/news/deceptive...TWT_NatureNews
Spice extract dupes assays and leads some drug hunters astray.
By Monya Baker
11 January 2017, Nature
Inside the golden-yellow spice turmeric lurks a chemical deceiver: curcumin, a molecule that is widely touted as having medicinal activity, but which also gives false signals in drug screening tests. For years, chemists have urged caution about curcumin and other compounds that can mislead naive drug hunters.*
Now, in an attempt to stem a continuing flow of muddled research, scientists have published the most comprehensive critical review yet of curcumin*—*concluding that there’s no evidence it has any specific therapeutic benefits, despite thousands of research papers and more than 120 clinical trials. The scientists hope that their report will prevent further wasted research and alert the unwary to the possibility that chemicals may often show up as ‘hits’ in drug screens, but be unlikely to yield a drug.
“Curcumin is a cautionary tale,” says Michael Walters, a medicinal chemist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and lead author of the review (K.*M.*Nelson et*al. J.*Med. Chem. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.6b00975 2017), published on 11*January.
...Walters isn’t confident that his report will stop poorly conducted research. “The people who should be reading this probably won’t,” he says.
FULL ARTICLE IN NATURE: http://www.nature.com/news/deceptive...TWT_NatureNews
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