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Biotech / Medical : Paracelsian Inc (PRLN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Judy Muldawer who wrote (3930)	10/13/1998 9:50:00 AM
From: Jonathan Schonsheck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4342

Here's the article: Yahoo! News AP Headlines Tuesday October 13 1:41 AM EDT Herbal Industry Eyes Its Medicines By LAURAN NEERGAARD AP Medical Writer WASHINGTON (AP) _ Just as wine varies from vineyard to vineyard and melons from one field are sweet while those from another are tasteless, herbs' ingredients vary from batch to batch _ and millions of consumers have little way of knowing just what they're getting. Now the herbal supplement industry is attempting to counter growing complaints with science: A fledgling movement uses pharmaceutical-style testing to ensure consumers get the ingredients they pay for _ and might even turn some popular herbs into prescription drugs. ''We're trying to give people some rational basis'' for choosing to take a particular herb, said Bernie Landes, chief executive of Paracelsian Inc. (PRLN - news), which looks for the active ingredients that make herbs work. ''We want to be the Underwriters Laboratory for herbals,'' said Elliot Friedman, who heads competitor PharmaPrint Inc. (PPRT - news), which just announced its testing had discovered that five ingredients may help St. John's wort ease depression _ not the lone ingredient advertised by most herbal brands. Americans are expected to spend $4.3 billion this year on herbal supplements such as saw palmetto, gingseng and others that promise to do everything from lifting depression and shrinking men's swollen prostates to fighting colds and easing stress. So far, there's little scientific proof behind many of the claims of better health. But if an herb does help, consumers would need a ''standardized'' brand that carries a consistent dose of the ingredients that make it work. St. John's wort, for example, has made headlines when laboratory tests, including one recently commissioned by the Los Angeles Times, found competing brands often don't contain levels of the active ingredient hypericin promised on the bottle. No brand advertises all four additional ingredients that PharmaPrint claims consumers also need. Testing is ''a step in the right direction,'' said Dr. H.B. Matthews of the National Institutes of Health, which organized a meeting last month where scientists demanded better quality from the booming industry _ and stressed the need for standardization. Among some brands, ''the contents vary by as much as tenfold,'' he said. The companies haven't yet proved their methods work, Matthews cautioned. ''It's alluring,'' agreed Mark Blumenthal of the nonprofit American Botanical Council. ''But the proof is going to come in the clinical trials,'' in which companies scientifically test their brands' true effect. The two companies are running herbs through the same lab tests that prescription medicines must pass _ called bioassays _ to uncover just what biologically active ingredients they contain. For example, certain test-tube experiments test whether chemicals interact with brain pathways involved in depression. If the experiments measure a response, that chemical is biologically active. Then the companies contract with herb manufacturers to guarantee certain brands carry high levels of the most biologically active ingredients. American Home Products next month begins selling six PharmaPrint-tested herbs under its popular Centrum supplement brand: Echinacea, garlic, ginkgo, ginseng, saw palmetto and St. John's wort. Paracelsian promises competing brands early next year. The companies also plan to seek Food and Drug Administration approval to sell the most effective herbs as prescription drugs, so doctors wary of the largely unregulated supplements could choose, for a little higher price, a fully tested medicine version. PharmaPrint has begun clinical trials of its first drug candidate, saw palmetto, to measure whether men taking the herbal pills have their enlarged prostates shrink more than men who get a dummy pill. Company testing shows saw palmetto is biologically active; the question is whether the effect is big enough to help. There already is some scientific data from Europe, where Germany sells herbs as drugs, that some herbs have healthful effects. That data prompted the NIH to finance a study starting this winter comparing St. John's wort to the prescription anti-depressant Zoloft, to see which better helps moderately depressed Americans. Such careful studies are new for the U.S. supplement industry, which has run largely on folklore. But ''to assume something the Seminole Indians used for maintaining the health of their prostate 500 years ago is identical to something in a bottle today _ it really begs the whole issue of science,'' said Paracelsian's Landes.