Nutraceuticals and nootropics for anti-aging

Cystic fibrosis symptoms vanquished by curcumin supplement

Researchers at Yale University have discovered that curcumin — the main ingredient in extracts from the spice turmeric — is able to correct the biochemical defect responsible for cystic fibrosis.

Cystic fibrosis is a disease that afflicts some 70,000 people worldwide. It is caused by a genetic defect in a gene called ‘CFTR’ (cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator). The CFTR gene determines the structure of the ‘CFTR protein’ — a protein that normally forms a pore in cell membranes. This pore protein regulates the passage of sodium and chloride ions across the cell membrane.

When a person inherits defective copies of the CFTR gene from both parents, the resulting biochemical disruption causes abnormal gland secretions and dehydration. Cystic fibrosis affects almost all of the glands in the body that secrete fluid. Thick secretions cause blockage in the pancreas, intestines and lungs.

The defect in the pore protein which causes cystic fibrosis, it turns out, is not a defect in the functional structure of the protein; rather, it is a defect in the protein’s tail, which is used to install the pore correctly into the cell membrane. The defective tail is misfolded, and this misfolding is detected by monitor proteins in the cell, resulting in the pore proteins being marked for destruction before they can be installed into the cell membrane. If a way could be found to obstruct the monitor proteins, then the pore proteins might move into their proper positions in the cell membrane despite their misfolded tails, and the symptoms of cystic fibrosis might disappear.

The Yale researchers, Michael Caplan and Marie Egan, tested this idea in mice afflicted with a cystic fibrosis-like disorder. According to news summaries of their work, they used curcumin to “starve” the monitor proteins of calcium. (However, it should be noted that another plausible reason to try curcumin is curcumin’s ability to force cells to produce more ‘molecular chaperones’ — proteins that prevent the misfolding of other proteins. These chaperones could protect the defective and misfolded pore proteins long enough to enable them to take their place in cell membranes.)

Caplan and Egan showed that mice fed curcumin at 45 mg/kg/day for three days showed a dramatic decline in their cystic fibrosis symptoms. After ten weeks, six out ten untreated mice had died, whereas only one of the treated mice died.

Link to news article:

Curry spice could alleviate cystic fibrosis

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The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is already organizing a clinical trial to test curcumin in humans with cystic fibrosis.

Link to press release:

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to Fund Clinical Trial of Potential Curcumin Therapy

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Extrapolating from the Yale mouse experiments, a human would need about 3 grams per day of curcumin. But curcumin appears to be much more easily absorbed from the digestive tract in rodents than in humans. Absorption enhancers are therefore needed in order for curcumin to be used effectively. One such enhancer is piperine, an extract from black pepper. Another is quercetin, a substance extracted from bilberries and other plants.

Thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, supplements like curcumin, piperine, and quercetin are available on the open market — in the U.S., at any rate. For the time being, access to them is protected from authoritarian government agencies that would otherwise have stripped the public of its right to buy them, and from the money-grubbing physicians’ lobby that seeks to force people to pay exhorbitant fees to physicians for writing prescriptions.

In the U.S., curcumin is often sold as ‘turmeric extract’; piperine is sold under the trade name Bioperine®; and quercetin is often sold as ‘quercetin dihydrate’. LifeLink carries all three of these supplements in a single product:

PriMeric™

LifeLink also carries piperine and quercetin as individual supplements:

Piperine

Quercetin

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It seems likely that many cystic fibrosis patients will want to try curcumin treatment without waiting years for formal clinical trials to officially establish its efficacy. But, even assuming that the treatment can be effective, the dosages required are still unknown. Those who want to experiment on themselves should not fool themselves into thinking that they are not taking some risks, and should try to minimize those risks by exchanging information with others who are doing similar self-experiments.

An Internet group has been set up at Yahoo to facilitate communication between people experimenting with curcumin as a treatment for cystic fibrosis. To join the group send an empty email to the following email address:

CurcuminForCF-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Yahoo will reply with an automated email reply. You may be required to create a Yahoo i.d. and password before your membership in the group can take effect.

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A technical discussion of the CFTR protein and its structure is located at:

Regulated trafficking of the CFTR chloride channel