Ginkgo Biloba Does Not Reduce Dementia Risk, Study Shows

piggy submitted, created time 1 month 3 weeks (www.sciencedaily.com)

The medicinal herb Ginkgo biloba does not reduce the risk of dementia or Alzheimer's disease development in either the healthy elderly or those with mild cognitive impairment, according to a large multicenter trial led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Findings from the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory (GEM) Study, which is the first to have the necessary participant numbers and monitoring years to enable measurement of G. biloba's effectiveness and safety profile in dementia prevention, were just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association

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Chemical from Medicinal Plants May Be Used to Fight HIV

piggy submitted, created time 1 month 3 weeks (www.sciencedaily.com)

Like other kinds of cells, immune cells lose the ability to divide as they age because a part of their chromosomes known as a telomere becomes progressively shorter with cell division. As a result, the cell changes in many ways, and its disease fighting ability is compromised.

But a new UCLA AIDS Institute study has found that a chemical from the Astragalus root, frequently used in Chinese herbal therapy, can prevent or slow this progressive telomere shortening, which could make it a key weapon in the fight against HIV

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Authentication of the Traditional Medicinal Plant Eleutherococcus senticosus by DNA and Chemical Analyses

kavin submitted, created time 7 months 1 week (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

In this paper, the authors found that EB and Iso are specific to the correct source plant of SGK. Of them, EB is thought to be the best marker compound for quality assurance of the SGK from the viewpoint of its pharmacological activity. EB: eleutheroside B Iso: isofraxidin ITS: internal transcribed spacer JP15: Japanese pharmacopoeia 15 (th) edition MS: mass spectrometry PCR: polymerase chain reaction SGK: shigoka Syr: syringaresinol diglucoside UPLC: ultraperformance liquid chromatography.

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Gingko Biloba, Memory Study Brings Surprises