Here we go again. I recently came across another natural substance that has been used to treat various ailments for hundreds of years in traditional medicine throughout the world, from North America to Russia and Japan. It is called betulinic acid, or BA, and is extracted from the white birch tree (Betula Alba), as well as from other plant species found mainly in tropical areas. Ralph Moss (http://tinyurl.com/25g8sv) informs us that traditional medicine has used it to treat diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, and all diseases of the alimentary tract. It is said to be a good “blood cleanser.” Blood cleanser, huh? Sounds good to me!
Of course I did an online search, et voilà , there it was!, a study mentioning birch tree extract and MM cells in the same breath, a study (http://tinyurl.com/2room7) published in 2006, informing us that BA possesses antiviral, antiparasitic, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activities, including, from what I read elsewhere, the ability to inhibit both Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. But most importantly, BA can inhibit the growth of cancer cells: In this study, we demonstrated a remarkable antiproliferative effect of BA in all tested tumor cell cultures including neuroblastoma, rabdomyosarcoma-medulloblastoma, glioma, thyroid, breast, lung and colon carcinoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma, as well as in primary cultures isolated from ovarian carcinoma, cervical carcinoma and glioblastoma multiforme.
That BA could kill cancer cells is not such a recent discovery. A University of Illinois study on BA and melanoma cells was published in 1995: http://tinyurl.com/29j76f Melanoma tumour growth was completely inhibited without toxicity. A follow-up study (http://tinyurl.com/235mag) was published in 2003. Another 2003 study showed for the first time that BA induces apoptosis in head and neck cancer cells. See: http://tinyurl.com/28hm27 And yet another 2003 study (full study: http://tinyurl.com/39tdwk) published in the Journal of Immunology examines the anti-cancer properties of BA and also mentions its anti-HIV effects. BA was found to suppress the activation of NF-kappa B in different cancer cell lines €”colon and lung, for instance. The researchers found that BA is a very potent inhibitor of TNF-induced NF-kB activation. This is important because TNF, or tumour necrosis factor, is very much involved in cancer growth and metastasis. BA was also found to induce apoptosis in brain tumour cells. The study ends: overall our results suggest that BA may have applications for various diseases mediated through NF-kB activation, including cancer, inflammation, and AIDS.
A July 2007 study (http://tinyurl.com/2fclmz) published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics points out that, while BA is not toxic even at a high dosage, it is not very potent. These researchers examine the purportedly stronger effects of six BA analogues, notably CBA-Im [1-(2-cyano-3-oxolupa-1,20(29)-dien-28-oyl)imidazole] (how’s that for a mouthful?). Another 2007 study (http://tinyurl.com/24aumm) published in Cancer Letters states that Treatment with BA was shown to protect mice against transplanted human melanoma and led to tumor regression. In contrast, cells from healthy tissues were resistant to BA and toxic side-effects in animals were absent. This is important. Like curcumin and many other non toxic compounds, BA leaves healthy cells alone. Those are five key words I seek in a study: It Leaves Healthy Cells Alone. These researchers tested cells from five high mortality cancers €”lung, colorectal, breast, prostate and cervical €”and discovered that, after 48 hours, almost equal amounts of BA inhibited their proliferation.
A clinical trial (see: http://tinyurl.com/23fqjp) is currently examining the effects of betulinic acid (a 20% betulinic acid ointment) on melanoma. I hope BA will soon be tested in a clinical trial setting with MM patients, which is the same wish I have expressed concerning so many other plant extracts with anti-MM effects in vitro.
I would like to end by quoting the final passages of Robert Frost’s poem “Birches”:
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Margaret, you may yet save us all!
I like this one especially because birches grow easily here, and I grew up a bit north of here in Duluth, where every other tree is a birch.
Northeast of Duluth, along the north shore of Lake Superior, is the Superior National Trail. We three ran a marathon on that trail once and there was more than one time in that 42k run/hike that we found ourselves in a pure birch forest. So peaceful, it felt as if the woods itself was healing, and I bet it was. We’re going back to run it again this year.
Your computer is fixed, I see 🙂
Don
This is very interesting, Margaret.In his novel “Cancer Ward”
Alexender Solzhenytzin writes about his experiences as a cancer
patient in Soviet Russia. He underwent surgery and was ‘cured’,
but at the same time surreptitiously would eat something he
described as “tree fungus”, or sometimes “tree cancer”.
This, I believe was a fungus which grows on the Birch tree,
and hence might take up the tree’s therapeutic properties.
It is called “tree cancer” because of its resemblance to a tumour.
That is all I can remember but Solzhenytzin was born in 1912
and is still alive living in Israel.How’s that for a survivor?
I know you are very busy, but here is an interesting paper
on medicinal mushrooms which I can recommend
http://sci.cancerresearchuk.org/labs/med_mush/med_mush.html
Old Bill.