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posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 21 2016, @03:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the those-greybeards-might-have-been-on-to-something dept.

A centuries-old herbal medicine, discovered by Chinese scientists and used to effectively treat malaria, has been found to potentially aid in the treatment of tuberculosis and may slow the evolution of drug resistance.

In a promising study led by Robert Abramovitch, a Michigan State University microbiologist and TB expert, the ancient remedy artemisinin stopped the ability of TB-causing bacteria, known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, to become dormant. This stage of the disease often makes the use of antibiotics ineffective.

The study is published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

"When TB bacteria are dormant, they become highly tolerant to antibiotics," Abramovitch said, an assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine. "Blocking dormancy makes the TB bacteria more sensitive to these drugs and could shorten treatment times."

Huiqing Zheng, et. al., Inhibitors of Mycobacterium tuberculosis DosRST signaling and persistence. Nature Chemical Biology, 2016; DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.2259


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  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday December 21 2016, @08:27PM

    by edIII (791) on Wednesday December 21 2016, @08:27PM (#444453)

    All I can offer is an anecdote with an antidote. I was in China and got extremely sick from something. Delirious and shitting myself kind of sick.

    A doctor came in with some herbal medicine wrapped in wax balls. Very different kind of pills to say the least. BUT THEY WORKED. I'm still alive, and no longer exploding from every orifice.

    I find it funny to poo poo the Chinese when we take some of their more interesting discoveries and mass produce them in energy drinks. It's good enough to keep us awake, but it's not up there with Western medicine right?

    They took care of me. One data point I know, but it's not fair to denigrate all of Eastern medicine in that fashion.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:03AM (#444642)
    No one said anything about traditional Chinese medicine being ineffective. Just as in traditional European medicine [wikipedia.org] they occasionally stumble onto something that actually works, and then it’s up to modern pharmacological research to figure out why and how it works. The system of traditional Chinese medicine is of course pre-scientific, involving vitalistic notions of Qi and the five elements for which there is no scientific evidence, and has plenty of parallels with the four humours of traditional European medicine. Just as with traditional European medicine, we take their more interesting discoveries, find out why and how they work (which the traditions don’t bother to figure out), and then mass produce them in energy drinks. Modern pharmacological practice did that to produce aspirin from traditional European medicine’s willow bark tea, and in a similar way Tu Youyou produced artemisinin from traditional Chinese medicine’s use of wormwood. Frankly, I’d rather have science on my side when life is on the line than pre-scientific mystical mumbo-jumbo, thank you very much.