By Eric Brand

Check out this interesting link to the World Health Organization's strategy for Traditional Medicine. The document has some fascinating stats on the global development of herbal medicine regulations, research funding, and legal status of CAM therapies. Definitely worth a read.

In other news, this study on berberine is quite interesting as well. The study assesses the potential of berberine to reduce side effects associated with the protease inhibitor drugs that are used for HIV. Berberine is a key constituent of the Chinese herbs Huang Lian and Huang Bai, and it is one of the most impressive and well-researched compounds in Chinese medicine.

In addition to this study evaluating its effects on the inflammatory response induced by protease inhibitors, another fascinating study on berberine on cholesterol can be found here. A few years ago, I was at an academic conference in China and one of the researchers on our committee was mentioning to me that berberine appeared to be very promising as a drug for reducing cholesterol. At the time the research was very new and largely unpublished, but now it appears that it is quite well-developed. The study cited here mentions that "oral administration of berberine in 32 hypercholesterolemic patients for 3 months reduced serum cholesterol by 29%, triglycerides by 35% and LDL-cholesterol by 25%." Berberine has a mechanism of action that is distinct from the action of statin drugs, and its remarkable efficacy suggests that berberine-containing medicinals such as Huang Bai and Huang Lian may be valuable tools for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia.