Megan Shank dot com

I WROTE THIS FOR OUR NOV. 2007 EDITION.

HEALTH
Quit Drinking; Try Herb

By Megan Shank (Shanghai)

To date, the West has predominantly treated alcoholism with pharmaceuticals – many with nasty side effects – and complete abstinence from alcohol. Yet many alcoholics hesitate to seek treatment because they don’t want to completely stop drinking and are wary of using synthetic drugs to kick their drinking habit. American researchers hope that within six months a Chinese herb encapsulated in a potent supplement form patented by Harvard’s McLean Hospital will hit the American market and alleviate the situation.

Scott E. Lukas, director of behavioral psychopharmacology at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, and his team have been studying the effects of kudzu on binge drinkers. In a recent outpatient study this year, after being treated for four weeks with a concentrated extract dose of kudzu, a group of 17 alcohol dependent subjects on average cut their consumption in half and increased days of abstinence in between drinking days.

The research is building on evidence that potent forms of ancient Chinese medicine may play a role in fighting the modern epidemic of alcoholism. Kudzu has been researched for more than a decade for its ability to both alleviate drunkenness and limit binging while initial studies of Chinese sage, or danshen, have also recently been taken up by Western researchers. “Kudzu had a profound effect,” Lukas tells Newsweek Select via phone from his Boston office. “The finding that I’m really excited about is that subjects more than doubled the days of abstinence in a row.”

McLean’s report is currently under review by the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The product’s quick placement on the market is possible because supplements are not required to undergo U.S. Food and Drug Administration scrutiny. Instead consumers are advised to use at their own risk. And although there has been some contention in the medical community – including a 2000 study by the Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Prescott, Arizona, which disputed kudzu’s effectiveness for alcohol treatment — researchers involved in the new work say these herbs may at least prove to be as effective as the current pharmaceuticals on the market and have less side effects.

“We did animal studies side by side of Kudzu and the recently released drug Acamprosate. Kudzu is better both in terms of dose level and in drinking reduction,” says David Lee, director of the Bio-Organic and Natural Products Laboratory at McLean.

This all encourages new ways of looking at treating problem drinking, says David Overstreet, professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a member of Skipper Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies. UNC-CH supplied the earliest and most comprehensive kudzu animal testing. “Many people don’t want to have to stay abstinent for the rest of their lives. We’re beginning to think with certain medicines that might be possible,” says Overstreet.

Italian researchers also intend to begin testing their own answer to the Chinese cure—a concentrated form of Chinese sage (danshen)—as soon as toxicologists release reports within the next two to three months about whether or not the substance is safe for human guinea pigs. In August, researchers at the University of Cagliari publicized results claiming that administration of concentrated forms of the sage to alcoholic rats drastically reduced the animals’ craving and consumption.

“These rats are the result of selective breeding that started 25 years ago when we started to breed rats with a preference for alcohol and those that avoided alcohol with each other,” Giancarlo Colombo, a lead researcher in the animal study, tells Newsweek Select via phone from his Cagliari office. “One hundred percent of the alcohol-preferring rats prefer alcohol –a convincing demonstration that alcohol dependence has a strong genetic base.” Although administration of danshen didn’t make the rats quit, it “markedly reduced their consumption,” Colombo says. Hundreds of rats participated in the study with consistent findings.

While abstinence hasn’t largely been enforced for problem drinkers in China, and neither danshen nor kudzu has been used to limit drinking, Xu Lieming, head of Shanghai Chinese Medicine Hospital’s liver diseases department, says that danshen has properties that support the liver and kudzu has been used in many traditional folk medicine “drunkenness dispeller” teas to help drinkers recover from the effects of intoxication and assist with alleviating of hangovers. Kudzu was a favorite of the Ming Dynasty’s Li Shizhen, a pioneer in Chinese medicine research, for its wide range of treatment abilities and its gentleness.

Today, Lukas and Lee are exploring other kudzu formulas mixed with additional Chinese herbs that combine extra benefits such as liver protection. Unlike the current supplement, they would put the new formula into the wheels of the FDA process to make it a more valid treatment in the eyes of the U.S. government and consumers.

In the meantime, Lee, who has received U.S. Federal Grant money to explore Chinese medicinal herbs and practices in the treatment of addiction, hopes for better research cooperation between the U.S. and China, the place of his birth, where such alcohol research has not been systematically undertaken. In that aim, he’s meeting with officials from the Technology and Health Ministries in late November to pitch his kudzu, along with other Chinese-inspired ideas for treating diseases and disorders.

While this is all very encouraging, involved parties agree that results are still preliminary and that alcoholism is a tricky disease with no simple answer. “It’s premature for us to call it a cure. To me, it’s a method of harm reduction,” Lukas says. “There are too many sub-types and reasons why people drink; there’s never going to be a panacea for every problem.”
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Sidebar

Enough is Enough

In May 2005, McLean released the results of a study in which they tested 14 alcohol dependent binge drinkers within a simulated home. Each subject received kudzu for one week of the experiment and a placebo for another. Results showed that kudzu treatment did not prevent them from drinking, but it did slow down how fast they drank and decreased the amount drank by half. While on the placebo, subjects drank just as much and just as fast as they had originally.

Researchers were thrilled, but they couldn’t explain it. Now, with further research completed this year, Scott E. Lukas, director of behavioral psychopharmacology at McLean Hospital says, “What it (kudzu) was doing was allowing the alcohol to take effect faster and lasting longer, but it doesn’t make the blood alcohol higher.”

He makes the analogy that if someone sees a chocolate cake and is only permitted a tiny slice then most likely the person will want another tiny slice and then another. On the other hand, if the person is given a large slice at the beginning, the person usually won’t ask for seconds. Kudzu works to make problem drinkers—who have long lost their ability to recognize when “enough is enough”—feel that the “cake”—or drink—before them is all that they can handle.

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