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Informative Articles on Natural Therapies of Healing

Introduction:
I haven't a clue how or where I got this article...... I just found it on my hard drive. Having reviewed it breifly it seemed quite worthy of putting up for public review.

Dear fellow list members,

Having looked at many different alternatives to interferon for treatment of
hepatitis C, my conclusion at this stage is that hypericin offers one of
the best approaches.   I am writing now to summarize my reasons, which may
be of interest to some of you.

The evidence so far is that, used consistently over long periods, hypericin
results in most patients in a long-term decline in viral load, and
improvements in liver function, with few or no side effects.  There is even
a possibility - though as yet there is nothing to confirm this - that it
might be able in some people to eliminate the virus altogether.

Generally speaking these results seem comparable to those achieved by some
practitioners of traditional Chinese herbal medicine who are concentrating
on hepatitis C, and who represent another promising alternative.

BACKGROUND ON HYPERICIN

I have been following the research on hypericin with interest for some time
(often following leads I got from others on this list.)  It is an extract
of the plant hypericum perforatum (also known as St. John's Wort,) which
has been used in traditional herbal medicine for centuries.  It is widely
prescribed in Germany as a natural anti-depressant.  More recently, a team
of researchers in Israel and New York have investigated its anti-viral
qualities.  Those researchers have been working with Dr. Anne
Steinbeck-Klose M.D., at the Infectious Disease Clinic in Bonn, Germany, in
using the product against hepatitis C.

Hypericin seems to be able to disrupt the viral envelope among enveloped
viruses such as HCV, preventing the virus from reproducing.  It may also
have other anti-viral or immunostimulant effects.

USE WITH 200 PATIENTS IN GERMANY

I met recently with Dr. Steinbeck-Klose in Bonn.  She is treating close to
200 hepatitis C patients with hypericin.  In the majority of her patients
she is seeing a decline in the viral load, and an improvement in liver
function tests.  Equally important, her patients are showing no side
effects whatever.

Dr. Steinbeck-Klose has been using hypericin with HIV patients since 1989
(HIV is also an enveloped virus,) and with HCV patients for the last two
years.  Most of her hepatitis C patients have had the virus for 10 years or
more.

Her hepatitis C patients are taking hypericin orally three times a day.
She is using a higher dose than is normally used for depression, to
maximise its ability to kill the virus.

With her hepatitis C patients, she normally tests for viral load every four
months.  She generally sees a pattern where the viral load goes steadily
down, but with peaks and valleys as it goes down.  In other words, some
tests may show a higher value than the previous one, but in the longer term
the trend is down.  She also sees an improvement in liver function tests.

Some 5% (she would have to check the exact figure) of her patients have
reduced their viral load to the point where the virus is no longer
detectable with the current test.  This takes time.  The first patient to
go below the detectable threshold did so after a year of treatment, the
others after about a year and a half.

At that point, she will continue treating them for at least a year, in the
hope of killing off the virus entirely.  Why not go on, she says, when
there are no side effects?  In some of her patients, the virus has been at
undetectable levels for 6 months or more.  None of them have seen it
return.

As far as I know, she has not yet taken patients off the treatment to see
if the virus comes back when they stop taking hypericin.  I should stress
that she is not claiming that hypericin is a cure for hepatitis C.  That
may prove to be the case for some people (which would be exciting, to say
the least), but her hope is that at least by keeping the viral count low
the disease can be made less aggressive.

People with a high viral load to start with may take longer to reach very
low levels.  Their counts tend to come down quickly at first, then more
slowly.

Four of her hepatitis C patients are children (a number of her HIV patients
are also children, some of whom she has been treating for up to seven
years.)  She has been treating three of the children with hepatitis C for
about a year, one for three months.  All are now at low levels of viremia,
but none have yet reached the point where the virus is undetectable.

SIDE EFFECTS

Dr. Steinbeck-Klose says that she has seen no side effects whatsoever among
her hepatitis C patients, though she checks for a wide range of effects.
Among her HIV patients, a few have had somewhat enlarged spleens or some
inflammation of the pharynx, but not one of her hepatitis C patients has
shown even those effects.

This fits with the general picture that emerges from my reading elsewhere.

Type "hypericum" into a search engine on the Internet, and you will soon
find (as I recall the site is:  www.hypericum.com) the full text of a book
published in 1996 entitled "Hypericum and Depression" by Harold H.
Bloomfield, M.D., Mikael Nordfors, M.D. and Peter McWilliams.

As the authors say in their chapter on side effects, hypericin appears to
be considerably safer than aspirin.  In 2,400 years of known medicinal use
of hypericum perforatum, there is (unlike aspirin) not a single recorded
human death from using hypericum, even in cases of accidental overdose.

An estimated twenty million people in Germany have used hypericum for
depression for more than a year (it apparently accounts for more than half
the total German market for anti-depressants, with three million
prescriptions every year), without any significant problems.  Indeed, a
number of the placebo-controlled studies of hypericin have found higher
rates of reported side effects among the placebo group than among those
receiving hypericin.

Among patients with depression using hypericin, side effects are rare and
mild.  In a study of 3,250 patients, only 2.4 percent reported any side
effects.  The occasional effects include gastrointestinal irritation (to
avoid this, it is suggested to take hypericin with food), tiredness and
restlessness.  When a group of AIDS patients were given extremely high
doses of synthetic hypericin intravenously, 35-times the normal dose for
depression, they did have problems with rashes and blistering of the skin,
since hypericin is a photosensitive compound.  These effects went away
after treatment stopped.  Hypericum in high doses has also been known to
cause dryness of the skin.

As I understand it, by comparison, Dr. Steinbeck-Klose is using a dose a
little less than double the normal dose for depression.  She has looked for
any reddening of the skin, but has never seen it in her patients.  To be
extra careful on this point, though, people using hypericin might want to
be well protected from excessive exposure to the sun, with hat and
suncream.

Germany's "Commission E", a scientific committee of the Federal Department
of Health responsible for evaluating the safety of herbal medicines, has
listed Hypericum perforatum as an approved herb.

While the product appears to be very safe, it must be said that no one can
be sure that there might not be long-term effects from using higher doses
than are used against depression, over a period of years.  Especially with
children, there is not yet information available from large-scale studies
about long-term use of these higher, anti-viral doses.

For example, no one fully understands the mechanisms by which hypericum
acts as an anti-depressant (I believe the same is true for synthetic
anti-depressants.)  Since it clearly has an effect on brain chemistry, it
cannot be ruled out that it could have some long-term negative effects on
brain chemistry.  When treating hepatitis C, we are using an
anti-depressant for people who are often not depressed, which could make a
difference.  There could be reasons for caution, or for delaying treatment,
with children, whose brains are still developing.

On the other hand, I was interested to note in the book "Hypericum and
Depression" that the authors say that hypericum is a particularly
appropriate anti-depressant product for children or elderly people,
compared to other anti-depressant drugs, because its effect is more gentle.

I understand that when evidence of hypericum's anti-viral qualities first
came out, some HIV patients took very high doses, and did have side
effects, including psychosis in some cases.  This is a reminder not to go
wild with doses of any medicinal herb.

The possibility of negative consequences, of course, has to be balanced
against the likelihood of unpleasant side effects from interferon, or the
risks of using no treatment for a potentially lethal infection.

I'll include here the abstract of a small study done by the Israeli
researchers and Dr. Steinbeck-Klose.

TRIAL WITH SYNTHETIC HYPERICIN

VIMRx Pharmaceuticals was testing their synthetic hypericin on patients
with hepatitis C, but gave up their trial after a short time, as I
understand it, because they weren't getting significant results and they
were getting side effects.  Dr. Steinbeck-Klose was never enamoured of the
VIMRx synthetic product, precisely because it produced more side effects
than the natural plant extract.  This may be because the natural product
contains a number of different compounds that modulate each other's
effects, and not just one molecule.

PRODUCTS

In treating her patients, Dr. Steinbeck-Klose has tried five different
brands of hypericum, and concluded that the most effective is "Helarium
Hypericum" produced by Bionorica GmbH in Germany.  In the book on the
website I mentioned, however, the authors list a number of hypericum
products which they consider of good quality.  St. John's Wort and
hypericum products are often available in health food shops.  They do not
require a prescription.

DOSAGE

I am sure it would be best to use hypericin under the supervision of a
doctor if that is possible.

Because I have no medical training whatsoever, I don't want to say anything
definitive about dosage.  My impression is that different dosages have been
used at different times.  In the study reported below, I believe they have
used  0.04 - 0.06mg of hypericin per kilogram of body weight per day, which
may be about 3-4 times the normal anti-depressant dose.  As I said earlier,
my recollection is that Dr. Steinbeck-Klose is using a dosage a little less
than double the anti-depressant dose.

There is a section on the anti-depressant dosage in the book at
www.hypericum.com

In order to measure how much hypericin is in the product you are using, you
have to multiply the percentage content of hypericum by the amount of plant
extract in the capsule.  For example, if a capsule contains 300mg of plant
extract with a 0.3%content of hypericin, it would contain 0.9mg of
hypericin.

Everybody seems to divide the daily dose into three and take hypericin
three times a day, to keep the level in the bloodstream as constant as
possible.

Others on the list, who are more qualified than I, may have more to say
about dosage.  On the one hand, a lower dosage should reduce the chances of
any unintended long-term consequences.  On the other hand, there is I
suppose the theoretical possibility that taking too low a dose might not
kill the virus and could even help it to develop resistance to hypericin.
This last point is just my own speculation; I haven't heard or read this
from any expert.

If taking hypericin, I would think it is important to keep it going over a
long period, and not have gaps in the treatment during which the virus can
build up again.

What I have heard from Dr. Gad Lavie Ph.D. in Israel, one of the
researchers, is that no one really knows the best dosage.  The dose they
have been using seems to be working, so they are cautious about lowering
it.  But that isn't to say that a lower dose wouldn't work.

>From my own reading elsewhere, my personal view is that it might be best
not to combine hypericum with a lot of other supplements, in case they
might inadvertently inhibit the anti-viral effects of hypericin.  For
example, I read in one paper on its anti-viral action that hypericin
appeared in lab tests to be less effective in the presence of anti-oxidants
such as beta-carotene.

I have noticed, incidentally, that hypericin has been reported also to have
anti-inflammatory effects, which could conceivably have some benefits for
hepatitis patients.

FUTURE STUDY

My own feeling is that if there is a real chance that hypericin could
reduce the viral load - and perhaps a small chance that it could eliminate
the virus - without any risk of the kind of side effects you get with
interferon (and most likely without any side effects at all), then there is
a strong case for it.  Dr. Steinbeck-Klose struck me as a good, competent
and caring doctor.

There should certainly be a proper larger-scale, placebo-controlled study
of it.  So far, the only information we have comes from very small numbers
of patients.  If the public funding for hepatitis C research were not so
dismally small, this might be happening already.  Of course we have the
usual problem that the plant extract cannot be patented, so pharmaceutical
companies aren't interested in investing in such research.

I have thought of exploring the possibilities for getting research funding
from one or more sources for researchers somewhere to do a study, and have
asked the principal Israeli researcher for his view on this.  If any of you
have any contacts or suggestions for getting research funds of this kind,
please let me know.

If any of you have any further information about hypericin, I would be very
grateful if you could share it with me, or with the list (I am on INFO
only).  If you are using it already, please keep us posted on your
progress.
 
 
 

THE FOLLOWING IS AN ABSTRACT OF A PRE-PRINT OF AN ARTICLE WHICH HAS NOT YET
BEEN PUBLISHED.  IT IS THEREFORE NOT FOR REPRODUCTION OR PUBLICATION.

"Effective Reduction of HCV RNA blood levels following therapy of chronic
hepatitis C patients with hypericin containing preparations from Hypericum
Perforatum.

Running title: Hypericin treatment of hepatitis C.

Anne M. Steinbeck-Klose M.D. (The Infectious Disease Clinic, Bonn, Germany)
Mathilda Mandel, M.D. (Institute of Hematology & Blood Transfusion Center,
Israel)
Yehuda Mazur, Ph. D. (The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel)
Gad Lavie Ph.D. (Institute of Hematology & Blood Transfusion Center, Israel)

"SUMMARY"

"Hypericin (HY)-calibrated preparations from the plant Hypericum Perforatum
were evaluated for efficacy in the treatment of patients with chronic
hepatitis C. HY is a photodynamc, broad spectrum virucidal agent that binds
viral membrane phospholipids. It then generates singlet oxygen that
cross-links viral capsid proteins, preventing virus uncoating during de
novo cell infection, effectively inactivating lipid enveloped viruses. HY
also possesses Protein Kinase C inhibitory activity that may provide
another mode of antiviral activity during cell infection. Nineteen patients
volunteered to participate in an uncontrolled open study and received daily
oral Hypericum preparations equivalent to 0.04 - 0.06 mg/kg HY.
Statistically significant (<0.03), treatment related, declines in HCV load
were observed n 16 patients (81.2%) throughout follow-up periods of 4-22
months. Blood HCV converted negative and was no longer detected by
quantitative PCR or bDNA assays in three patients for follow-up periods of
5-6 months (15.8%) and in two additional patients for 4 months (total
responders 31.6%). No side effects were detected throughout treatment
periods ongoing for 22 months, which appear to be extendable indefinitely.
The broad antiviral spectrum of HY seems to be resilient to development of
drug resistant mutants. Thus, Hypericum has the potential to emerge as an
effective, inexpensive treatment for chronic hepatitis C devoid of adverse
effects."