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Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Pomelo can boost drug effects
By Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T.
Breakthroughs
The cheaper way to treat a disease is to use a drug strong enough to destroy the organisms causing it.
But if your resources are not enough to support in buying the drug for an extended period of time, the only option is to find a drug that gives more than what it costs...or perhaps find a cheap booster that needs only a small amount of the drug to bring out the desired effect. When resources are thus limited, the key word is efficiency.
That cheap booster, a recent study uncovered, turned out to be grapefruit, commonly known here as pomelo. It is good, at least to certain drugs, like those for blood-pressure, or for cholesterol-lowering drugs, organ transplant drugs, human immunodeficiency virus drugs, and sedatives.
In the study led by Paul Watkins, a group of substances known as furanocoumarins found in grapefruits (Citrus maxima), boosted the said drugs’ effect on our body. (Watkins is director of the General Clinical Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.)
The reason: Furanocoumarin in grapefruit juice causes these drugs to enter the blood stream more efficiently, thereby increasing the dose and effect. Furanocoumarin is also the substance that gives grapefruits its characteristic bitter taste.
In the study, the researchers compared orange juice, whole grapefruit juice and grapefruit juice without furanocoumarins. The results, published in the May 2006 issue of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, show that once the furanocoumarins are removed, grapefruit juice behaved just like orange juice, and has no effect on the drugs being tested. The bitter taste also is removed.
These findings, however, have potentially desirable as well as dangerous side effects. Not knowing these effects can cause unwarranted over dosage in patients who take the drugs mentioned earlier, and it can be fatal.
“That can be a good thing,” said Watkins, “if you can control it. It turns out that you don’t just get more, you get a more reliable delivery—there is less variation from one person to another when you do this.”
“Practical efficiency is common,” said late US President Theodore Roosevelt, in his book Autobiography, “and lofty idealism not uncommon; it is the combination which is necessary and the combination is rare.” (For comments and suggestions, email to ztliteratus6046@lycos.com, or text to 0927-979-3519.)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 21, 2006 issue)
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