CHICAGO, May 20 (AScribe Newswire) -- Researchers in the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy have received $5 million in new funding to study botanical supplements that may provide women relief of menopausal symptoms and to support research training in pharmacognosy, the study of natural products.
The College of Pharmacy's Center for Botanical Dietary Supplement Research in Women's Health is one of five botanical research centers to receive the grants from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the Office of Dietary Supplements, both part of the National Institutes of Health. The UIC center will receive $1 million a year for five years.
Headed by Norman Farnsworth, UIC professor and director of the program for collaborative research in the pharmaceutical sciences, the six-year-old center has previously received $8.5 million to address the issues of standardization, quality, safety and efficacy of botanical dietary supplements for women.
"We're looking for things that will reduce hot flushes but do not have the same side-effect profile as hormone therapy," Farnsworth said. "Our wish is to establish the safety and efficacy of botanical supplements as alternatives to hormone replacement."
Once the problem of hot flushes has been dealt with, Farnsworth thinks botanicals may also prove to alleviate other aspects of menopause such as loss of bone density and cognitive function.
Farnsworth said the center will use the funding to continue ongoing studies of five plants and add six more. It has continuing studies of black cohosh, red clover, chaste berry, valerian and dong quai, which Farnsworth described as the most popular plant in China for women's conditions.
Hops, an ingredient in beer, will be one of the new botanicals studied.
Despite the popularity of botanical dietary supplements, there have been very few rigorous clinical studies. "Our center is addressing the dire need to study the safety and efficacy of dietary supplements," Farnsworth said.
He explained that botanical products are much more complex than single drugs. Plants can have many active compounds, some of which may be expressed only under ideal growing conditions. Farnsworth compared the situation to growing coffee, which can vary in taste depending on growing conditions and locations.
Unlike botanicals, manufactured drugs are standardized as to types and amounts of ingredients and typically have only one active ingredient that is tested in clinical studies before it is made available.
Variations in botanical supplements can have serious consequences.
"Plants produce different amounts of chemicals from one year to the next," Farnsworth said. "You have to have chemical and biological standardization to ensure the consumer gets the same product every time."
"We're trying to establish a framework by which one would address this problem and that could be adopted by others," added Richard van Breemen, UIC professor of medicinal chemistry and co-director of the center.
The center currently is recruiting women for a placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind study comparing the effects of black cohosh, red clover, the drug Prempro and a placebo in reducing menopausal symptoms.
"This will be the first time a botanical extract is studied for a year in a clinical trial," Farnsworth said. "In comparison, most studies are 12 weeks, so it's difficult to interpret the results."
Women interested in enrolling in the study may call UIC's department of obstetrics and gynecology at 312-413-5819 for more information.
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CONTACT: Carol Mattar, 312-996-1583; cmattar@uic.edu
UIC ranks among the nation's top 50 universities in federal research funding and is Chicago's largest university with 25,000 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas around the world. For more information about UIC, visit www.uic.edu
SUMMARY: The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy's Center for Botanical Dietary Supplement Research in Women's Health has received $5 million in new funding to study botanical supplements that may provide relief of menopausal symptoms and to support research training in pharmacognosy, the study of natural products.
KEYWORDS: pharmacy, botanicals, pharmacognosy, menopause,
supplements
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