Okay, okay, I know that curcumin does this that everything and more besides, but I would never have thought that it ALSO inhibits H1N1!!! But it does. Incredibly. A blog reader (merci!!!) sent me a recently published study on this very topic, see abstract: http://tinyurl.com/ybug9sl After reading the abstract, I commented to Piccolo (my male kitty), “non ci posso credere, non è possibile!!!” (= I can’t believe it, this isn’t possible.) He batted his handsome yellow eyes at me, as if to say, “silly girl, why didn’t you just ask me? I knew it!”

Well, I don’t have enough time right now to provide a full report, although I am itching to do so!…but my mother-in-law is coming over for lunch in less than a half hour, and I have a few things to do before she gets here (such as making our bed!, even though the cats, as usual, are draped all over it and will not cooperate at all…).

The study shows that curcumin greatly reduced the impact of influenza A at non-toxic doses. The authors write: To our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating that curcumin exerts anti-influenza activity, and the anti-influenza effect is via a mechanism that abolishes virus-cell attachment. To my knowledge, too! Oh, I am sooo grateful to my blog reader for sending me this full study. A big round of applause!

For lack of time, I am going to cut and paste the Conclusions part, highlighting the main points. The researchers tell us that 1. curcumin interrupts virus-cell attachment, which leads to inhibition of influenza virus propagation; 2. curcumin has an established safety profile and high SI value of 92.5, and 3. hence, curcumin has promising potential for use as an anti-influenza drug. Yesssss!

[I had no idea what “SI value” meant, so I had to look it up and finally found that it means “selectivity index,” implying, methinks, that curcumin is able to select its “target” (the evil cells, probably…?), without interacting with “other targets” (the healthy cells?). If I understood SI correctly, curcumin turns out to possess a very good therapeutic index, which is good to know.]

I will read the study more carefully tomorrow and probably add a few more titbits from the full study. Sorry to be in such a terrific hurry, but I thought I should get this bit of news published on the blog as soon as possible…

Oh, one final remark. My bottles of Sambucol arrived from the UK yesterday. Super. Now, with my usual curcumin dose and my increased daily intake of vitamin D, I should be all set. Oh, and let me also mention that Stefano and I are having our regular yearly flu shot on Tuesday. Not the H1N1 vaccine, mind you…my haematologist strongly recommended against it (in my case). Oh drat, my mother-in-law just got here…bed still unmade…uffa! 😉