Chinese Traditional Herb Can Cure and Relieves Pain

An ingredient traced from traditional Chinese natural treatments has been found good at relieving pain. Aiming the way to a different no addictive analgesic for chronic inflammatory and nerve pain, according to UC Irvine pharmacological medicine researchers.

Working with Chinese scientists, Olivier Civelli and his UC Irvine co-workers separated a compound called Dehydrocorybulbine (DHCB) from the roots of the Corydalis yanhusuo plant.

In tests on mice, DHCB turned out to reduce both inflammatory pain, which is associated with damaged tissues and the infiltration of immune cells, and damage-induced neuropathic pain, which is a result of injury to the nervous system. This will be significant because there are no current enough treatments for neuropathic pain.

Corydalis yanhusuo plants
Credit: herbalextractok

However, the study found that DHCB did not produce the threshold seen with continuing use of most conventional pain cures, such as morphine.

“Nowadays the pharmaceutical industry battles to find new medicines. Yet for centuries, people have applied herbal treatments to address variety health problems, including pain. The purpose was to find out substances in these herbal cures that may help us discover new ways to treat health conditions,” said Civelli, the Eric L. & Lila D. Nelson Chair in Neuropharmacology. “We’re enthusiastic this one shows promise as an effective pharmaceutical. It also shows a different way to understand the pain process.”

Study results come in the January 20 issue of Current Biology.

They are the product of collaboration between two teams separated by the Pacific Ocean. Since Chinese medicine results greater acceptance in Western medical practice, Xinmiao Liang at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China and his team have been working to create an “herbalome” of all compounds in plant extracts that display pharmacological properties. The UC Irvine team suggested imposing “reverse pharmacology” – a novel drug discovery that Civelli created about 25 years ago – to the herbalome project.

Together they screened 10 conventional Chinese medications called analgesics, testing nearly 500 substances for pain-relief abilities. Only DHCB in corydalis brought on a reproducible result.

Corydalis is usually a blooming herbal plant that grows in Siberia, Northern China and Japan. People make use of its root extract to cure menstrual cramps, chest pain and stomach pain. It has been previously examined for its analgesic properties, but this is the first time DHCB continues to be recognized, produced and tested.

Chronic neuropathic pain affects greater than 50 million Americans; however, supervision of this discomfort continues to be an essential clinical challenge because of the poor results and severe side effects of traditional analgesics. Civelli stated that drawing on traditional Chinese medical-herbal products might lead to a development cure for these patients.

DHCB needs to be evaluated for any toxicity before it being created as a drug. It is also possible that if the compound is chemically changed, a stronger pharmaceutical will be discovered. While DHCB is not currently available, part of the Corydalis yanhusuo root or extracts could be bought in health stores or online.

Yan Zhang, Lien Wang, Gregory Scott Parks, Kang-Wu Li, Mi Kyeong Kim, Benjamin Vo, Emiliana Borrelli, Zhiwei Wang, M. Julia Garcia-Fuster and Z. David Luo of UC Irvine;

Chaoran Wang, Xiuli Zhang, Zhimou Guo, Guangbo Ge and Ling Yang of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China; and Yanxiong Ke of the East China University of Science & Technology also contributed to the study, which was backed up by the National Institutes of Health (grants MH60231 and DA024746), the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia & Depression (now the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation), the Tourette Syndrome Association, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the National High-Tech Research & Development Program of China.