A beginners question about a medicinal plant

[Cristian Segovia]

Hi everyone, i kind of stumbled onto the diy bio movement and it seems really interesting. I don't really know where to start so some recommended reading or tips would be really appreciated.

I got interested in this because there is a plant in my country that is supposed to have a positive effect on the immune system of someone who has a weakened immune system, for what ever reason. I saw it work on my mother when she had dengue fever a few months ago. Long story short, after the results from a blood analysis came back, it showed that her immune system wasn't doing too well, she came back home grounded the leaves and put them in water and drank it through a metal straw that we call "bombilla" that has a metal filter at the end. After which her immune system rebounded and got better, I've heard of other people doing this same thing and getting similar results.

So my question is, where can i start? i want to analyse this plant for it's medicinal properties and maybe turn it into some type of medicine. If what i've observed and heard is possible then many people could be benefited with this kind of medicine. And it's not the only one, many plants and the like are said to have medicinal properties around here, i've used some of them and they've been pretty effective. I would like to start testing and analysing them.

Btw im a Comp sci student, if i can make a good case i might be able to persuade my principal into getting the people in biotech and biology involved(my campus is about 200km from the main university campus where the dept. of science is located, which is why i haven't been able to go to them with this idea)


Thanks for taking the time to respond
-Cristian from Paraguay

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Welcome!

I see several methods.

A) get pig blood, extract immune cells. Then test if the extract has effects in cytokine release.

B) give it to a very large group of sick people, and give a control culture gras. Make sure to inclzde a control culture with plastic straw.

C) Get 200 mice and try out the effect of bacteria on them. This may be animal cruelty if you don't know how to treat them in a humane way. This assumes that the egfect of the herb is not anti-viral but infuces the immune responde, so bacteria and virusses are fought more aggressively. Don't try to work with zika in your basement for obvious reasons ;)

[Cristian Segovia]

thank you for the response, what do you mean by a control culture grass? and control culture with a plastic straw?

Do you have any recommended reading for getting started?
Thank you very much for responding

[Jake]

The best and easiest place to start is by starting to document everything you can about this plant.  Every preliminary investigation paper I've read starts by citing a history of use, case studies, anecdotal evidence, etc. supporting the investigation of the plant as a medicine.

You'll almost certainly find out interesting things.  Perhaps different practitioners prepare or use the substance differently, or use it for different ailments.

Sounds like you already have your first case study, so just document that well and then get the who, what, why, where, when, and how of this plant's overall history of use.

A good place to start is to look at other similar studies.  Check out Mullein leaf (Verbascum thapsus, Great mullein, Common mullein).  There's a long history of use for inflammatory, lung conditions, hemorrhoids, etc..  They investigated the anti-inflammatory properties by subcutaneously injecting mice with an irritant and mullein extract then measured the injection site inflammation against the controls.  They found it to be quite effective.

You may find in your background research some property of the plant that is easier to test than immunological effects.

A clinical study is probably beyond your reach at the moment, and is probably overkill at this point.  But if people are using this remedy on a regular basis around you there's probably some research you can start right away.  Taking lancet sized blood samples from people before and after treatment and then doing a white blood cell count might show something interesting.

Working with blood is something to be very careful with though.  I'd suggest having the subjects lance themselves, put a drop on a slide, then apply the cover slip, and place it in a storage box for you.  This way you can wait for any extra blood on the slides to dry and only work with the samples in your lab under safe conditions.  Touching blood in the field is too dangerous, as can be seen by the large number of accidental sticks suffered by nurses each year.

With some good background info and a proposal, I bet you can find a local hospital lab that would help you with the counts, maybe even run all of them for you.  I'm not sure what format the automated count machines take though.

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

What I meant by grass, you have say 40 people who get a drink made of a plant like grass wouithout medical effects , and 40 people who get the plant you want to study. Thus you can control for the placebo effect.

The best way is probably reading up on how other researchers tested medical herbs and herb extracts, identifying the easiest methods and making a simple and effective DIY protocol.

[ukitel]

Hi,
First of all I would collect as many information as possible regarding the plant. It is likely that someone else undertook this type of research in the past. One important point is to pin down in which cases this treatment was adviced: when this plant was started being used in the past, there was no idea of immune system. Therefore, its usage must have been associated with some kind of symptom or illness. Was it used to treat just "general weakness" or some certain type of infection?

Once you have those information, you should find a way to measure the effect. I would suspect that if there is an effect, then it works by killing bacteria rather than boosting the white blood cells: it is more plausible that the plant produces an antibiotics for ist own usage, rather than a molecule that by sheer chance works on our immune system.
Checking is the juice slows bacteria growth is a pretty easy experiment, a starting point would be to test it on safe bacteria. However, given that the juice has antibiotic activity, its "spectrum" might restricted to the microbes involved in the specific illness it is used to treat. In this case you would have to use a pathogenic strain and that is not DIYable. Involving a biology lab would be necessary.

A small "clinical study" is also out of reach, primarily because of the ethical problems involved.

Best
-ukitel