If Arthritis is Bugging You Consider Trying Ants

Is it possible that ants could be used to treat arthritis? The answer as strange as it seems is–Yes. Chinese traditional medicine is not bound by the same conventions as traditional western medicine and that leads to some interesting discoveries such as this report that compounds present in certain Chinese ants could actually be useful in treating diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis pain.

Hong Kong Baptist University researchers used 2 kilograms of Polyrhacis lamellidens Smith, an ant species which has often been used by Chinese traditional medicine to see if they could isolate drugs or compounds to use as an arthritis treatment. This study used ants from an biological supply house in Nanjing China. Identification of the species of ants was confirmed by an entomologist from the forestry Department. Solvent extraction of the ant chemicals was performed and then identification of constituent chemicals was performed.

Some promising substances were identified which appear to have some benefit for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis pain and hepatitis C. These compounds are called bi-cyclic polyketide lactones, polyrhacitides A (1) and B (2),which may be responsible the reported anti-inflammatory and painkilling effects of these ants in traditional chinese medicine.

ref: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/jnprdf/2008/71/i04/abs/np070558l.html

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 4:35 am and is filed under alternative medicine, arthritis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.