animal87
08-13-2014, 01:34 PM
Bee venom therapy may give new hope to arthritis sufferers.
By Charles Downey
WebMD Feature
Louise Chirasello of Brewster, New York, was suffering intractable pain from her two hip replacement operations. She tried to get relief from the strongest prescribed painkillers, and from physical therapy.
But nothing worked. "I was so sore, you could not touch my hips without me crying out," says Chirasello.
Then she heard about Lawrence Cohen, a doctor in Danbury, Conn., who treats terrible pain with the venom of ordinary honeybees. At first, Cohen gave the 84-year-old widow several injections of bee venom weekly, but eventually reduced the dose to one injection every two or three weeks.
"Right after I got that first injection of bee venom, I left his office pain-free," Chirasello says. A year later, she is still free of pain and has needed no additional bee venom injections.
Unproven Results
Although bee venom therapy is largely an unproven technique, about 50 U.S. physicians report good results using the substance to treat not only pain but arthritic conditions, multiple sclerosis, and other health woes. Other practitioners treat high blood pressure, asthma, hearing loss, and even premenstrual syndrome with bee venom.
According to Christopher Kim, medical director of the Monmouth Pain Institute in Red Bank, N.J., bee venom therapy has been around for thousands of years. Reference to the treatment can be found in ancient Egypt and Greek medical writings. Also known as apitherapy, the technique is more widely used in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America.
Treatments supposedly started after beekeepers, who were stung many times, noticed their arthritis pains were relieved. Some practitioners still use live bee stings to deliver the venom.
Most Got Better
Kim, who has administered apitherapy to 3,000 people, published a two-year study on 108 rheumatoid and osteoarthritis patients who had not responded to convention treatments. Starting with twice-weekly injections, he gradually increased the number of shots until the patients improved significantly. Most subjects showed improvement after an average of 12 injections.
In his article -- printed in the March 1989 issue of the German journal, Rheumatologie -- Kim concluded that apitherapy was safe, effective, and free of serious side effects.
But evaluations of most U.S. medical treatments are based on double-blind studies -- where neither the subject nor researcher knows who is getting the real medicine or a placebo. Most reports about bee venom therapy are anecdotal. Even those studies looking at more than one patient, such as Kim's, have not included a placebo group for comparison.
"It's very difficult to find a placebo substance that will mimic a bee venom injection or sting with its itching, redness, and swelling," says Kim.
Bee Venom Studied
Nonetheless, enough interest exists in apitherapy and its health claims that Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has begun a one-year preliminary study of bee venom to treat multiple sclerosis -- a chronic, progressive, and often crippling neurological disorder.
"Most the 40 ingredients in bee venom have been identified," says Cohen. "Mellitin, an anti-inflammatory agent found in the venom, is one hundred times stronger than cortisone."
Bee venom also contains a substance known as adolapin, which is both anti-inflammatory and pain-blocking. Practitioners believe all the ingredients in bee venom work together to cause the body to release more natural healing compounds in its own defense. Bee venom is also said to increase blood circulation and reduce swelling.
Caution Needed
But some caution is necessary. Because one to five percent of the population is allergic to bee venom, apitherapy patients must first be tested. Moreover, the practitioner should have close at hand a bee sting kit which can remedy allergic reactions.
"From where I sit, most bee venom therapy treatment is done on arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and relieving numbness in an arm or leg," says Ross Hauser, a doctor at the Caring Medical & Rehabilitation Service in Oak Park, Illinois.
In a study as yet unpublished, Hauser followed for one year 51 patients with documented chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. The subjects started bee venom therapy with one injection weekly and increased to an average of eleven shots every other week.
"Fifty-eight percent had a very positive response and got significantly better," says Hauser. "But 30 percent had no benefit, and one patient got worse."
The patients who improved could walk and climb stairs better and had better bowel and bladder control, as well as more control over the activities of daily living.
The downside, according to experts, is that some patients can't endure the injections or bee stings. Says Hauser, "I've had patients who did very well with bee venom therapy but found the injections too painful."
Use in treating HIV:
Nanoparticles containing bee venom toxin melittin can destroy human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while at the same time leaving surrounding cells unharmed, scientists from Washington University School of Medicine reported in the March 2013 issue of Antiviral Therapy.
The researchers said that their finding is a major step toward creating a vaginal gel that can prevent HIV spread. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.
Joshua L. Hood, MD, PhD, a research instructor in medicine, said:
"Our hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people could use this gel as a preventive measure to stop the initial infection."
Melittin destroys some viruses and malignant tumor cells Melittin is a powerful toxin found in bee venom. It can poke holes in the protective viral envelope that surrounds the human immunodeficiency virus, as well as other viruses. Free melittin in large-enough quantities can cause considerable damage.
Senior author, Samuel A. Wickline, MD, the J. Russell Hornsby Professor of Biomedical Sciences, has demonstrated that nanoparticles loaded with melittin have anti-cancer properties and have the capacity to kill tumor cells. Linking bee venom with anticancer therapies is not new, in 2004 Croatian scientists reported in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture that honey-bee products, including venom, could well have applications in cancer treatment and prevention.
Normal cells remain intact - the scientists showed that nanoparticles loaded with melittin do not harm normal, healthy cells. Protective bumpers were added to the nanoparticles surface, so that when they come into contact with normal cells (which tend to be much larger), the nanoparticles bounce off rather than attach themselves.
Scientists have discovered a powerful toxin in bee venom that could end up playing a crucial role in preventing the spread of HIV. HIV is much smaller than the nanoparticles and fits in between the bumpers. When HIV comes across a nanoparticle it goes in between the bumpers and comes into direct contact with its surface, which is coated with the bee toxin, which destroys it.
Hood explained "Melittin on the nanoparticles fuses with the viral envelope. The melittin forms little pore-like attack complexes and ruptures the envelope, stripping it off the virus."
While most anti-HIV medications work on inhibiting the virus' ability to replicate, this one attacks a vital part of its structure. The problem with attacking a pathogen's ability to replicate is that it does not stop it from starting an infection. Some HIV strains have found ways to circumvent replication-inhibiting drugs, and reproduce regardless.
It has also been used to treat Lyme disease and MS mostly for pain associated with those two.
By Charles Downey
WebMD Feature
Louise Chirasello of Brewster, New York, was suffering intractable pain from her two hip replacement operations. She tried to get relief from the strongest prescribed painkillers, and from physical therapy.
But nothing worked. "I was so sore, you could not touch my hips without me crying out," says Chirasello.
Then she heard about Lawrence Cohen, a doctor in Danbury, Conn., who treats terrible pain with the venom of ordinary honeybees. At first, Cohen gave the 84-year-old widow several injections of bee venom weekly, but eventually reduced the dose to one injection every two or three weeks.
"Right after I got that first injection of bee venom, I left his office pain-free," Chirasello says. A year later, she is still free of pain and has needed no additional bee venom injections.
Unproven Results
Although bee venom therapy is largely an unproven technique, about 50 U.S. physicians report good results using the substance to treat not only pain but arthritic conditions, multiple sclerosis, and other health woes. Other practitioners treat high blood pressure, asthma, hearing loss, and even premenstrual syndrome with bee venom.
According to Christopher Kim, medical director of the Monmouth Pain Institute in Red Bank, N.J., bee venom therapy has been around for thousands of years. Reference to the treatment can be found in ancient Egypt and Greek medical writings. Also known as apitherapy, the technique is more widely used in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America.
Treatments supposedly started after beekeepers, who were stung many times, noticed their arthritis pains were relieved. Some practitioners still use live bee stings to deliver the venom.
Most Got Better
Kim, who has administered apitherapy to 3,000 people, published a two-year study on 108 rheumatoid and osteoarthritis patients who had not responded to convention treatments. Starting with twice-weekly injections, he gradually increased the number of shots until the patients improved significantly. Most subjects showed improvement after an average of 12 injections.
In his article -- printed in the March 1989 issue of the German journal, Rheumatologie -- Kim concluded that apitherapy was safe, effective, and free of serious side effects.
But evaluations of most U.S. medical treatments are based on double-blind studies -- where neither the subject nor researcher knows who is getting the real medicine or a placebo. Most reports about bee venom therapy are anecdotal. Even those studies looking at more than one patient, such as Kim's, have not included a placebo group for comparison.
"It's very difficult to find a placebo substance that will mimic a bee venom injection or sting with its itching, redness, and swelling," says Kim.
Bee Venom Studied
Nonetheless, enough interest exists in apitherapy and its health claims that Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has begun a one-year preliminary study of bee venom to treat multiple sclerosis -- a chronic, progressive, and often crippling neurological disorder.
"Most the 40 ingredients in bee venom have been identified," says Cohen. "Mellitin, an anti-inflammatory agent found in the venom, is one hundred times stronger than cortisone."
Bee venom also contains a substance known as adolapin, which is both anti-inflammatory and pain-blocking. Practitioners believe all the ingredients in bee venom work together to cause the body to release more natural healing compounds in its own defense. Bee venom is also said to increase blood circulation and reduce swelling.
Caution Needed
But some caution is necessary. Because one to five percent of the population is allergic to bee venom, apitherapy patients must first be tested. Moreover, the practitioner should have close at hand a bee sting kit which can remedy allergic reactions.
"From where I sit, most bee venom therapy treatment is done on arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and relieving numbness in an arm or leg," says Ross Hauser, a doctor at the Caring Medical & Rehabilitation Service in Oak Park, Illinois.
In a study as yet unpublished, Hauser followed for one year 51 patients with documented chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. The subjects started bee venom therapy with one injection weekly and increased to an average of eleven shots every other week.
"Fifty-eight percent had a very positive response and got significantly better," says Hauser. "But 30 percent had no benefit, and one patient got worse."
The patients who improved could walk and climb stairs better and had better bowel and bladder control, as well as more control over the activities of daily living.
The downside, according to experts, is that some patients can't endure the injections or bee stings. Says Hauser, "I've had patients who did very well with bee venom therapy but found the injections too painful."
Use in treating HIV:
Nanoparticles containing bee venom toxin melittin can destroy human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while at the same time leaving surrounding cells unharmed, scientists from Washington University School of Medicine reported in the March 2013 issue of Antiviral Therapy.
The researchers said that their finding is a major step toward creating a vaginal gel that can prevent HIV spread. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.
Joshua L. Hood, MD, PhD, a research instructor in medicine, said:
"Our hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people could use this gel as a preventive measure to stop the initial infection."
Melittin destroys some viruses and malignant tumor cells Melittin is a powerful toxin found in bee venom. It can poke holes in the protective viral envelope that surrounds the human immunodeficiency virus, as well as other viruses. Free melittin in large-enough quantities can cause considerable damage.
Senior author, Samuel A. Wickline, MD, the J. Russell Hornsby Professor of Biomedical Sciences, has demonstrated that nanoparticles loaded with melittin have anti-cancer properties and have the capacity to kill tumor cells. Linking bee venom with anticancer therapies is not new, in 2004 Croatian scientists reported in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture that honey-bee products, including venom, could well have applications in cancer treatment and prevention.
Normal cells remain intact - the scientists showed that nanoparticles loaded with melittin do not harm normal, healthy cells. Protective bumpers were added to the nanoparticles surface, so that when they come into contact with normal cells (which tend to be much larger), the nanoparticles bounce off rather than attach themselves.
Scientists have discovered a powerful toxin in bee venom that could end up playing a crucial role in preventing the spread of HIV. HIV is much smaller than the nanoparticles and fits in between the bumpers. When HIV comes across a nanoparticle it goes in between the bumpers and comes into direct contact with its surface, which is coated with the bee toxin, which destroys it.
Hood explained "Melittin on the nanoparticles fuses with the viral envelope. The melittin forms little pore-like attack complexes and ruptures the envelope, stripping it off the virus."
While most anti-HIV medications work on inhibiting the virus' ability to replicate, this one attacks a vital part of its structure. The problem with attacking a pathogen's ability to replicate is that it does not stop it from starting an infection. Some HIV strains have found ways to circumvent replication-inhibiting drugs, and reproduce regardless.
It has also been used to treat Lyme disease and MS mostly for pain associated with those two.