A blog reader (thanks!) sent me the abstract of a brand new study discussing Serenoa repens, more familiarly known as saw palmetto, and its murderous effect on multiple myeloma cells. Sherlock is on holiday, and by the time she returns to Florence, Stefano and I will be on holiday, so I won’t be able to read the full study until September…in the meantime, though, we can feast our eyes on the abstract: http://tinyurl.com/mxrysb

Important excerpt: saw palmetto induced growth arrest of a variety of human leukemia cells including U266 and RPMI 8226 multiple myeloma cells […]. It killed U266 (=myeloma) cells in a time- and dose-dependent manner. More details can be found in the abstract (inhibition of STAT3 signaling, etc.).

According to a 2009 UK drug safety study (http://tinyurl.com/m9ejra), saw palmetto is one of the most widely used herbal preparations for the treatment of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). As for side effects, Currently available data suggest that S. repens is well tolerated by most users and is not associated with serious adverse events. The majority of adverse events are mild, infrequent and reversible, and include abdominal pain, diarrhoea, nausea and fatigue, headache, decreased libido and rhinitis. We found no evidence for drug interactions with S. repens.

Great. Another promising substance just joined my to-be-tested list…!