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Written By: Editorial Team | Published : August 7, 2018 8:32 PM IST
There is a good chance that somewhere, someone is studying whether turmeric can treat the ailment they are suffering from or not. According to the National Institutes of Health, there are more than 15,000 studies published about curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, and about 50 manuscripts added to this collection each week.
The deputy director of the Division of Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, D. Craig Hopp said, "It's really taken on sort of panacea-like properties in terms of the things it's being studied for and the things it has been reported to be useful for."
Like ginger, turmeric is a popular spice. It is also known as Indian saffron, the plant grows across India, other areas of Asia and Central America. Turmeric has been used for medicinal purposes for nearly 4,000 years, it also adds flavour to various dishes and it is a vital component of certain religious rituals.
According to the PTI reports, recently, scientists have also discovered that curcumin, an extract of turmeric, is an effective agent for killing cancer cells.
Dipanjan Pan, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US said, "Until now, however, curcumin is what we call in pharmaceutical science as a 'false lead' - it is therapeutic, but the full effect can't be utilised because it's poorly soluble in water."
Santosh Misra, a post-doctoral researcher working with Pan said,"When you try to deliver a drug, it requires solubility in water, otherwise it won't flow through the bloodstream."
The study, published in the journal PNAS, showed that the complex was 100 times more effective in treating various cancer types such as melanoma and breast cancer cells than using curcumin and platinum agents separately.
Curcumin has shown to prevent the phosphorylation of STAT3, a well-known signalling pathway that triggers the growth of cancer cells and allows them to survive, in vivo studies.
The platinum-curcumin combination kills the cells by fragmenting its DNA.
Although the researchers have only tested the method for delivering curcumin, its contribution to cancer treatment will ultimately also come from the likelihood the method will work with other drugs as well.
However, according to the CNN.com reports, another research published in the journal Scientific Reports where the researchers said that curcumin does not dissolve easily, and much of it does not enter the bloodstream. They found out this problem while investigating the effects of turmeric in treating glaucoma.
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