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Herbal Supplements and Health
Published in Anil K. Sharma, Raj K. Keservani, Surya Prakash Gautam, Herbal Product Development, 2020
Himangini Bansal, Sakshi Bajaj
Kava, a herbal sedative with antianxiety or calming effects, is prepared by extracting the rhizomes of Piper methysticum, a south pacific plant. There are at least 72 different cultivars of this species, which differ both in appearance and in chemical composition. The active chemicals of the plants, known as kavalactones, are concentrated in the rhizomes. Inhabitants of the south pacific islands prepare a kava-based drink by mixing fresh or dried rhizomes with cold water or coconut milk. Among more than 18 kavalactones characterized, 6 are considered the primary constituents of kava extracts: kawain, dihydrokawain, methysticine, dehydromethysticine, yangonin, and desmethoxyyangonin. Quite a considerable lot of these compounds, particularly those with a methylenedioxyphenyl derivatives (methysticine and dihydromethysticine), have been found to restrain various cytochrome P450s: CYP2C19, CYP1A2, CYP2C9, CYP3A4, CYP2D6, and CYPA4. It is therefore astonishing to discover that pharmacokinetic interactions among kava and Western medications are generally rare and are not very much reported in the literature. There is a case report that kava decreases the viability of levodopa (Dasgupta and Hammett-Stabler, 2010).
Modulating effect of DL-kavain on the mutagenicity and carcinogenicity induced by doxorubicin in Drosophila melanogaster
Published in Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, 2021
Thaís Teixeira da Silva, Júlia Braga Martins, Maria Do Socorro de Brito Lopes, Pedro Marcos de Almeida, José Luiz Silva Sá, Francielle Alline Martins
Piper methysticum, a shrub that belongs to the family Piperaceae, has been cultivated in the South Pacific for over 3000 years and is also known as kava, kava root and awa, among other names (Martin et al. 2014; Ooi, Henderson, and Pak 2018; Showman et al. 2015). The pharmacological effects of P. methysticum are derive from kavapyrones, also known as kavalactones, which are present primarily in the rhizome (Thomsen and Schmidt 2021). Although kava contains 18 known kavalactones, 96% of biological activity is attributed to kavain, dihydrokavain, methysticin, dihydromethysticin, yangonin and desmethoxyyangonin (Lebot and Lévesque 1989; Upadhyay et al. 2014); Several investigators reported that kavain is the major component in ethanol kava rhizome extracts (Chua et al. 2016; Ferreira et al. 2019).