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Monday, August 08, 2005
Editorial: What’s in mangagaw?
RAIN used to be a harbinger of good, signaling a time for planting and harvesting. In these contrary times, the return of the wet season signals an outbreak of disaster, from flash floods to disease.
No disaster preparedness plan has yet armored the populace against the ravages of dengue fever, an acute infectious disease caused by a virus transmitted by the Aedes Egypti or yellow fever mosquito.
Cebu City, with its 500 victims and 13 fatalities since the start of the year, ranks first in dengue cases in the entire country.
For a city that might be on the brink of an epidemic, it is disquieting that health authorities continue to be silent on the use of mangagaw (Euphorbia hirta), a weed proliferating in open lots and roadsides, as herbal remedy to a disease that has claimed lives.
Folk cure
Florencia Glinogo can’t keep track of the times she has picked and boiled the weed’s leaves, stems, roots, and other parts, except the flowers.
She remembers though mixing the dark-brown decoction with juice or milk to mask the slightly acrid taste so her employer’s son Carlos would drink it. Despite manifesting the classic symptoms-fever that subsided for a day or two and then recurred, drop in platelet count, fatigue and rashes-Glinogo’s ward recovered without being hospitalized.
Glinogo recalls that the family pediatrician dismissed the boy’s drinking of boiled mangagaw. She also heard another doctor scold a caller on the air for asking why authorities were not aggressively promoting the use of mangagaw in the fight against dengue.
Despite what doctors are saying or not saying though, the Alegria native vouches for the miracle weed that has healed many.
Lack of evidence
Curiosity in the weed’s properties prompted a student of the University of the Philippines in the Visayas Cebu College (UPVCC) to study it three years ago.
According to assistant professor Judith Silapan of the Biology program, her student’s experiment revealed that mice taking mangagaw had an increase in their platelet count, but this was not significantly different from the platelet count of control specimens that had no intake of the decoction.
Silapan also cautions that the study was limited because it was not a clinical test using human subjects. A related work cited by the student also used mice, and showed also no significant increase in the platelet count.
The Biology professor explains that experimental findings using mice subjects have to be carefully interpreted in terms of their application to humans.
In the absence of epidemiological data, authorities are constrained from promoting mangagaw as an antidote for dengue hemorrhagic fever, theorizes Silapan. Validation can only come after a clinical test is conducted with an experimental group representing the population, with the subjects’ explicit consent in their participation.
Biopiracy
However, the UPVCC academic believes that health authorities should mobilize organizational capability and funds to isolate in mangagaw any bioactive ingredient that could help increase platelet count.
Silapan says that many Filipino researchers are overtaken by bioprospectors from developed countries and multinational companies that study the gene pool of developing countries like the Philippines. Plant and animal species, as well as indigenous knowledge, can yield genetic or biochemical resources that are manufactured into medicinal drugs and other commercial compounds.
So the race is on for bodies like the National Integrated Research Program on Medicinal Plants (Nirpromp), a national research body aimed at systematizing the study of medicinal plants, as well as the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD) and other agencies mandated to provide effective and affordable pharmaceutical products derived from commonly available plants.
Since the creation of Nirpromp in 1974, only 10 plants have been tested to pass safety and efficacy standards. Technology for the drug preparation of only three plants has been transferred by Nirpromp to local pharmaceutical companies. In-depth phytochemical and pharmacologic studies isolating the plants’ active principles are put on hold for lack of private sector support.
Worse than having biopirates exploit folk remedies that have been in use for years, the public is deprived of safe and cheap alternatives to expensive Western traditional treatments. According to PCHRD, pre-clinical trials of ampalaya for diabetes and other plants possibly effective for malaria, dengue fever, and tuberculosis are “currently underway” since 1999.
(August 8, 2005 issue)
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