Chemical from Medicinal Plants May Be Used to Fight HIV

piggy submitted, created time 3 days 21 hours (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

2 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: herbal medicine alternative medicine medicinal plants plants treatments astragalusimmunology atragalus root telomeres immune cells HIV Chinese herbal therapy HIV highly active antiretroviral therapy

Ginkgo Biloba Does Not Reduce Dementia Risk, Study Shows

piggy submitted, created time 2 days 35 minutes (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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Hey Bud, Spare Some Genes?

piggy submitted, created time 6 days 21 hours (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

A common European weed has turned its compact flower into an expansive, yellow-petalled blossom by borrowing a couple of genes from a close Italian relative. Researchers say the exchange is a rare documented example of beneficial genetic flow between species. It also challenges the notion that higher organisms must rely on their own genes to evolve.

The story starts three hundred years ago, when botanists introduced a yellow Sicilian flower called Senecio squalidus to Oxford, U.K. At the time, there was only one variety of a British weed known as the common groundsel (S

2 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: hybridization ragwort groundsel botany evolutionary biology evolution genetic flow genetics genes flowers plants