Metabolite profiling and mechanisms of bioactivity of snake autolysate - A traditional Uzbek medicine

The real Theriac - panacea, poisonous drug or quackery?

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

Theriac is considered the most popular cure-all multi-ingredient medicine and has been used for more than two millennia. It has also been used as one of the most important anti-epidemic drugs up to the 19th c., treated as an emergency medicine in case of e.g. bubonic plague.

AIM OF THE STUDY

Until now, no reliable information regarding the pharmacological effect of the treacle was available, including its possible toxic or narcotic properties. In order to change the state of knowledge in this matter we have selected the Theriac recipe that had been actually used for producing the treacle in 1630, which was confirmed by the official municipal documents of the time.

METHODS

The recipe was written in Latin, with the use of pre-Linnean nomenclature and then apothecary common names, which required translation into the modern scientific language in order to get reliable pharmacological conclusions. The information from historical sources has been compiled with the pharmacological data concerning the most potent compounds, which for the first time made it possible to calculate the amounts of active compounds in the doses taken by then patients.

RESULTS

Only two species included in Theriac can be harmful in humans: poppy and sea squill, but in both cases the calculated quantity of morphine and cardiac glycosides, respectively, were below toxic level. There are no indications, both from the historical and pharmacological point of view, for Theriac being toxic or narcotic in patients, when used as prescribed.

CONCLUSIONS

As for now, the most probable is that the treacle owed its postulated efficacy in the main indications to the placebo effect. Still, the results should be further confirmed by reconstructing the actual Theriac and subjecting it to modern tests and analyses.

Mechanisms of Bioactivities of Fucoidan from the Brown Seaweed Fucus vesiculosus L. of the Barents Sea

The aim of this study was to elucidate some mechanisms of radical scavenging and the anti-inflammatory, anti-hyperglycemic, and anti-coagulant bioactivities of high molecular weight fucoidan from Fucus vesiculosus in several in vitro models. Fucoidan has displayed potent 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazil radical scavenging and reduction power activities. It significantly inhibits the cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) enzyme (IC50 4.3 μg mL-1) with a greater selectivity index (lg(IC80 COX-2/IC80COX-1), -1.55) than the synthetic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug indomethacin (lg(IC80 COX-2/IC80COX-1), -0.09). A concentration-dependent inhibition of hyaluronidase enzyme with an IC50 of 2.9 μg mL-1 was observed. Fucoidan attenuated the lipopolysaccharide-induced expression of mitogen-activated protein kinase p38. Our findings suggest that the inhibition of dipeptidyl peptidase-IV (DPP-IV) (IC50 1.11 μg mL-1) is one of the possible mechanisms involved in the anti-hyperglycemic activity of fucoidan. At a concentration of 3.2 μg mL-1, fucoidan prolongs the activated partial thromboplastin time and thrombin time by 1.5-fold and 2.5-fold compared with a control, respectively. A significant increase of prothrombin time was observed after the concentration of fucoidan was increased above 80 μg mL-1. This evidenced that fucoidan may have an effect on intrinsic/common pathways and little effect on the extrinsic mechanism. This study sheds light on the multiple pathways of the bioactivities of fucoidan. As far as we know, the inhibition of hyaluronidase and DPP-IV by high molecular fucoidan was studied for the first time in this work. Our results and literature data suggest that molecular weight, sulfate content, fucose content, and polyphenols may contribute to these activities. It seems that high molecular weight fucoidan has promising therapeutic applications in different pharmacological settings. Anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-coagulant drugs have been used for the management of complications of COVID19. Taken as a whole, fucoidan could be considered as a prospective candidate for the treatment of patients with COVID19; however, additional research in this field is required.