::
This is the story of a wounded soldier named Hussein Khan. Critically injured, down with high grade fever and thirsty, he decided to drink dirty water from a pond. The water was too bitter, but since his thirst was unquenched, he decided to have a mouthful of it “one last time”, or so he thought.
Hours passed and he woke up again. The fever was gone. A new dawn looked ahead!
This water was no magic water. It turned out that the bitterness was due to the bark of trees of cinchona that were abundant in the region. Quinine is derived from the same bark. Effectively, the soldier had survived malaria in a war torn endemic zone! Quinine the first effective anti-malarial drug is seldom used now but its analogues such as chloroquine are.
Quinine is not the only drug of herbal origin used in modern medicine. Digitalis derived from fox glove, atropine derived from atropa belladonna are some other examples of drugs that had herbal origin, but thanks to modern research, they are now seen as “allopathic drugs”. From anti malarials to anti malignancy drugs and immunomodulators, one can cite many examples.
All these wonder drugs are not free from side effects in either crude or refined form as any student of pharmacology would tell you. It’s just the difference between the right dose and wrong. Digitalis used in cardiac ailment is also known to offset the rhythm of the heart! Quinidine an isomer of quinine has serious cardiac toxicity as well as ocular toxicity that is shared by its synthetic analogue, chloroquine. Cyclosporine, an immuno-
modulator is used by renal transplant recipients, but is known to be a nephrotoxic drug itself.
So the notion, that only ‘modern drugs” have side effects and others are free needs to be readdressed. Only a placebo would be free from side effects, but it would have no desired effect as well!
Having said this I would like to address a discussion begun by a fellow Ophthalmologist as a comment on my previous post: What about the potential therapeutic effect of a herbal drug that someone prescribes for viral hepatitis, in Maharashtra, India? I would say, if the observation is correct, someone needs to design a study to see if any substance present in its extract indeed has an anti viral property!
But until such substantiation is there, the herbal drug is at best only a “potential” or “candidate” drug.
A proper research on such drugs is in every one’s interests, especially the patients who squander a lot of money on alternative medicine. According to my personal estimation, the money spent on irrational treatment (including irrelevant use of proven drugs) outweighs that spent on real drugs judiciously.
So the mantra remains: Know about medicines, explore the credentials of a doctor. Its your body, don’t use it as a test tube.
::
This is the story of a wounded soldier named Hussein Khan. Critically injured, down with high grade fever and thirsty, he decided to drink dirty water from a pond. The water was too bitter, but since his thirst was unquenched, he decided to have a mouthful of it “one last time”, or so he thought.
Hours passed and he woke up again. The fever was gone. A new dawn looked ahead!
This water was no magic water. It turned out that the bitterness was due to the bark of trees of cinchona that were abundant in the region. Quinine is derived from the same bark. Effectively, the soldier had survived malaria in a war torn endemic zone! Quinine the first effective anti-malarial drug is seldom used now but its analogues such as chloroquine are.
Quinine is not the only drug of herbal origin used in modern medicine. Digitalis derived from fox glove, atropine derived from atropa belladonna are some other examples of drugs that had herbal origin, but thanks to modern research, they are now seen as “allopathic drugs”. From anti malarials to anti malignancy drugs and immunomodulators, one can cite many examples.
All these wonder drugs are not free from side effects in either crude or refined form as any student of pharmacology would tell you. It’s just the difference between the right dose and wrong. Digitalis used in cardiac ailment is also known to offset the rhythm of the heart! Quinidine an isomer of quinine has serious cardiac toxicity as well as ocular toxicity that is shared by its synthetic analogue, chloroquine. Cyclosporine, an immuno-
modulator is used by renal transplant recipients, but is known to be a nephrotoxic drug itself.
So the notion, that only ‘modern drugs” have side effects and others are free needs to be readdressed. Only a placebo would be free from side effects, but it would have no desired effect as well!
Having said this I would like to address a discussion begun by a fellow Ophthalmologist as a comment on my previous post: What about the potential therapeutic effect of a herbal drug that someone prescribes for viral hepatitis, in Maharashtra, India? I would say, if the observation is correct, someone needs to design a study to see if any substance present in its extract indeed has an anti viral property!
But until such substantiation is there, the herbal drug is at best only a “potential” or “candidate” drug.
A proper research on such drugs is in every one’s interests, especially the patients who squander a lot of money on alternative medicine. According to my personal estimation, the money spent on irrational treatment (including irrelevant use of proven drugs) outweighs that spent on real drugs judiciously.
So the mantra remains: Know about medicines, explore the credentials of a doctor. Its your body, don’t use it as a test tube.
::
Posts
1 comment:
Epilogue by the author:
According to a programme broadcast on BBC Urdu, Hussein Khan was a British soldier. According to some other accounts, he was a patient who participated in an experiment carried out by Dr. Ronald Ross. For every bite of mosquito, Khan recieved an anna (a coil of small denomination. Malarial parasites' oocytes were later recovered from Khan's blood.
Post a Comment