Herbal Antibiotics: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-Resistant Bacteria (20 page)
Read Herbal Antibiotics: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-Resistant Bacteria Online
Authors: Stephen Harrod Buhner
Tags: #Medical, #Health & Fitness, #Infectious Diseases, #Herbal Medications, #Healing, #Alternative Medicine
Alchornea cordifolia
is a common plant throughout much of the largish middle of Africa, from Senegal to Kenya and Tanzania and from just north of South Africa to Angola. It's a straggly shrub or small tree up to 25 feet in height. It is widespread in secondary forest and likes riparian habitat and marshy areas but does spread into drier ecosystems, especially in disturbed soils. It will grow in terrain up to 5,000 feet (1,524 m) in altitude. It likes acid soils and is an active soil modulator, restoring calcium levels to depleted soils.
Alchornea laxiflora
grows in the same regions and has virtually the same appearance.
Propagates well from cuttings; they root solidly in a few months. The seeds are considered to be difficult germinators, needing to be scarified and tended diligently. Germination takes up to 3 months.
The plant can be harvested at any time. The leaves are taken when healthy and vital in appearance. The plant is normally wildcrafted as it is widespread and vigorous once established. It is not yet an agricultural crop.
A. castaneifolia
A few normally reliable companies list scientific studies on the activities of
Alchornea cordifolia
under an entirely different plantâ
Alchornea castaneifolia. A. castaneifolia
has become popular because it is sometimes used in indigenous ayahuasca ceremonies. The Internet now has scores of sites selling it under the identifier
iporuru
or some version of that name.
Unfortunately most of the sites selling
A. castaneifolia
indicate that it has the same actions as
A. cordifolia
and point to studies on
A. cordifolia
to prove it. This just isn't accurate. The plants are definitely
not
interchangeable. There is very, very little research on the pharmacology of
A. castaneifolia
, and while there may be some overlap in actionsâfor instance, it
may
be useful for staph infectionsâthere probably is not. Under no circumstances should you believe that
A. castaneifolia
will act as a reliable systemic antibacterial for resistant infections.
Actions
Amoebicidal
Anthelmintic
Antiamoebic
Antianemic
Antibacterial
Antidiarrheal
Antidrepanocytary
Antifungal
Anti-inflammatory
Antimalarial
Antimicrobial
Antioxidant
Antiprotozoal
Antiseptic
Antitumor
Antiviral
Bronchial relaxant
Smooth muscle tissue relaxant
Trypanocidal
Active Against
Aspergillus
spp.
Babesia
spp.
Bacillus subtilis
Candida albicans
Entamoeba histolytica
Escherichia coli
Helicobacter pylori
Klebsiella pneumoniae
Plasmodium
spp.
Proteus mirabilis
Proteus vulgaris
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Salmonella enteritidis
Salmonella typhi
Shigella flexneri
Staphylococcus aureus
Streptococcus pyogenes
Use to Treat
Malaria, systemic staph infections, pseudomonas, anemia, fevers, infections from
Streptococcus pyogenes
, and diarrhea and dysentery from such things as severe
E. coli
,
Salmonella
,
Entamoeba
,
Shigella
, or amoebic organisms. Generally, resistant Gram-positive and Gram-negative infections, systemic or of the GI tract. Infected wounds. Sickle cell anemia, sleeping sickness, resistant respiratory infections, conjunctivitis (as an eyewash), UTIs.
Other Uses
Alchornea is a potent alley-cropping plant and soil restorer: Rows of the trees are planted as windbreaks to protect other crops while returning calcium to depleted soils. The fruits produce a black dye traditionally used for fishing nets, cloth, pottery, and leather. The wood is used for construction and crafts.
It coppices well and is very hard to get rid of once established.
A. cordifolia
contains the usual terpenes, sterols, flavonoids, tannins, carbohydrates, glycosides, saponins, and alkaloids. It also has alchorneine, alchornine, and alchornidine (all are imidazopyrimidine alkaloids), several guanidine alkaloids, allic acid, gentisic acid, anthranilic acid, protocatechuic acid, ellagic acid, hyperoside, various quercitrins, daucosterol, acetyl aleuritolic acid, beta-sitosterol, epoxy fatty acids (in the seeds, lots), and a lot of other stuff no one has discovered yet.
A. cordifolia
is widely used throughout every region of Africa in which it grows. It is used as a wash for eye infections and powdered for ringworm and other skin infections. It is an anti-inflammatory, a carminative, an anodyne, a diuretic, an emmenagogue, a blood purifier, and a tonic and has antitumor actions. See chart on next page for a comprehensive list of traditional uses.
The herb is not readily available in the West. I have found only one supplier (Woodland Essence) that carries the herb in tincture form. Part of the point of listing this wonderful plant here is to stimulate suppliers to import it or for gardeners to begin planting it in the United States. It would do well here. If you can plant alchornea in your region, do so; it will be worth the effort.
Seed stock is available from the National Forestry Seeds Centre of Burkina Faso (Centre National de Semences Forestieres de Burkina Faso) at $14 per kg (about 2.2 pounds). The website is
www.cnsf.gov.bf
. The primary government language is French, but an English version of the website was under construction as this was being written.
Not known as far as I can tell.
Not known as far as I can tell.
Not known as far as I can tell, though some species have been used for a long time in South American indigenous practice. They don't seem to be similar in action to the two African species discussed here.
In vitro studies have found
Alchornea cordifolia
active against 15 MRSA isolates and to be strongly active against
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
. Low concentrations of the herb are active against
E. coli
,
P. aeruginosa
,
Staphylococcus aureus
; it is as or more active than pharmaceutical antibiotics such as gentamicin and ampicillin. In vivo studies have confirmed the MRSA action in mice. A 50 percent ethanol extract (normal tincture) of alchornea was tested against 74 microbial strains: aerobic, facultative, anaerobic, and fungi. It was active at low concentrations against all except three
strains, all filamentous fungi. Like most systemic antibacterial herbs, it was a bit stronger against Gram-positive strains than Gram-negative. It has been found to be active against
Helicobacter pylori
,
Salmonella typhi
,
Shigella flexneri
,
Salmonella enteritidis
, and enterohemorrhagic
E. coli
(EHEC), bearing out its traditional uses for treating dysentery and diarrheagenic bacterial pathogens. Ethanolic and water extracts have been found to be equally active except that only the ethanolic extract was active against EHEC. Other studies have found the ethanolic extract reliably effective in vitro for
E. coli
,
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
,
Staphylococcus aureus
,
Klebsiella pneumoniae
,
Proteus mirabilis
âat the proper dosage, it is as effective as ciprofloxacin.
In vitro screening of 45 Congolese medicinal plants found alchornea to be highly antiamoebic, with strong activity against
Entamoeba histolytica.
Other studies have confirmed this, including finding a strong spasmolytic action. The plant exhibited a more than 70 percent reduction of spasms in guinea pig ilea.
A. cordifolia
has been found to produce its activity in the treatment of dysentery and diarrheal diseases through three mechanisms: antibacterial, antiamoebic, and antispasmodic actions that are apparently synergistic. In vivo study has found the plant to be highly antidiarrheal against castor-oil-induced diarrhea in mice.
Sickle cell anemia is a genetic disease resulting from a mutation in the hemoglobin structure. The cells undergo alterations, ending up as a sickle shape rather than round. This reduces the ability of the cells to carry oxygen and starves the body of enough oxygen to function. About 25 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa have the disease, which is passed from parent to child genetically; half of those in whom the disease becomes active die before the age of five, about 60,000 in Nigeria each year. Traditional healers have used
Alchornea cordifolia
for centuries in the treatment of the disease, and recent scientific study has found it highly effective. Essentially the plant prevents sickling of the cells (antidrepanocytary activity) and reverses cells that have already transformed. Of all the plants tested for sickle cell treatment,
A. cordifolia
was the most potent. In Lagos a relative,
A. laxiflora
, has been found to have the same activity. The use of
A. cordifolia
reduced sickling by 85 percent and reversed 69 percent of sickled cells. The pharmaceutical approaches normally used for sickle cell anemia are highly toxic, but researchers commented that with this herbal preparation “toxicity ⦠is not a problem.” The herb is sold as a standardized product, as a tea or capsules, in Lagos and called Cellod-S. Good outcomes have been reported in clinical practice.
Given the traditional use of alchornea for treating malaria across Africa, it is odd that only two in vitro studies have been conducted on its activity against
Plasmodium falciparum.
One study found it potently active, the second mildly so.
A. cordifolia
is fairly high in ellagic acid, which has been found to be strongly active, in vivo and in vitro, against the malarial parasites. The former study also found it strongly active against
Trypanosoma brucei
. (
A. cordifolia
is used in ethnoveterinary practice to treat that disease, and studies have found it active against both resistant and nonresistant forms.)
Like a number of plants in this chapter,
Alchornea
appears to be hemotonic, a hemoregenerator, and hemoprotectant, but the research has not focused that broadly. It does have a long history of use against anemia, malaria, and sickle cell anemia, as well as for trypanosomiasis (a.k.a. African sleeping sickness), which is also a parasitic disease of the bloodstream, similar in some respects to malaria and babesia.
The research on
Alchornea laxiflora
is limited, but both its traditional use and the studies that exist seem to confirm that its actions are very similar to those of
A. cordifolia
. It grows in the same eco-ranges and is considered interchangeable by the traditional practitioners. In vitro studies have found that the plant has anticonvulsant and sedative actions (in vivo studies have found this action in
A. cordifolia
as well) and is strongly anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antibacterial against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. The chemistry of the two plants is very similar.
One study found
A. laxiflora
strongly active against HIV-1 and HIV-2 in vitro, more so than AZT. Another found the plant to possess immune modulatory and stimulant actions. It generates a lymphoproliferative effect on naive murine splenocytes and thymocytes and modulates the effects of the phagocytic and lysomal enzyme activities of murine macrophages. It increases phagocytosis and intracellular killing capacity. Lysosomal phosphatase activity of peritoneal macrophages increased significantly.
Of 42 plants tested in one study,
Alchornea cordifolia
was found to have the most potent antioxidant effects. In vitro study found that the plant was highly protective of rat liver against hepatotoxins. In vivo study in mice found the same.
A number of in vivo studies have found the plant to be strongly anti-inflammatory and very effective in the treatment of induced edema in rats. In vitro studies have found
Alchornea cordifolia
strongly anti-inflammatory by inhibiting human neutrophil elastase and superoxide anion.
