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Restricted and Banned Herbals
Published in Amritpal Singh Saroya, Reverse Pharmacology, 2018
Botany: A large, woody vine. Leaves are opposite, smooth, leathery, oblong or elliptic. Flowers are white, borne mostly in the axils of the upper leaves. Fruit is rounded, pale yellowish and brown, 10 centimeters or more in diameter, containing several seeds. Chemical composition: Alkaloids: strychnine and brucine.
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Published in Anton Sebastian, A Dictionary of the History of Medicine, 2018
Nux Vomica Seed from Strychnos Nux-vomica, a plant indigenous to India and the Malay archipelago, was introduced into medicine by the Arabs. The first description was given by Valerius Cordus (1515–1554) of Hesse in 1540, and De Nuce Vomica giving an account of its toxic effects on animals, was published by J. Lossius in 1682. It was used in England in the 17th century as a pest poison. The poisonous action is due to the alkaloids, brucine and strychnine. Brucine was isolated from bark by French pharmacist, Pierre Joseph Pelletier (1788–1842), in 1819.
Abies Spectabilis (D. Don) G. Don (Syn. A. Webbiana Lindl.) Family: Coniferae
Published in L.D. Kapoor, Handbook of Ayurvedic Medicinal Plants, 2017
Chopra et al.1,50 reported the presence of three new alkaloids, viz., α-and β-colubrine and pseudostrychnine, vomicine. The fruit pulp contains the glycoside loganin. Leaves contain the alkaloids brucine, strychnine, and strychnicine. The bark contains chiefly brucine and traces of strychnine, but no strychnicine. The younger bark contains 3.1% and the older bark shows 1.68% brucine.
Strychnine, old still actual poison: description of poisoning cases reported to French Poison Control Centers over the past thirteen years
Published in Toxin Reviews, 2022
Camille Paradis, Denis Dondia, Audrey Nardon, Ingrid Blanc-Brisset, Arnaud Courtois, Jules-Antoine Vaucel, Magali Labadie
Strychnine was used in the past as a therapeutic agent to stimulate salivary and gastric secretion due to its bitterness, to increase appetite and was used as a fortifying agent (Patocka 2015). Some studies suggested the benefit of strychnine for the treatment of non-ketotic hyperglycinemia (also known as glycine encephalopathy), a rare disease in which a deficient metabolism of glycine causes its accumulation in the body fluids and tissues including the brain. This accumulation of glycine induces neurologic and metabolic abnormalities (MacDermot et al.1980, Orphanet: Encéphalopathie glycinique 2020). Chemically close to strychnine and present in plant extracts of the strychnos genus, brucine shows greater therapeutic potential, particularly in neurology and cancerology (Yu et al.2019, Abdallah et al.2021, Ismail et al.2021, Seshadri 2021).
Biochemical studies evaluating the chemopreventive potential of brucine in chemically induced mammary carcinogenesis of rats
Published in Toxicology Mechanisms and Methods, 2019
Uma Saminathan, Pachaiappan Pugalendhi, Suganthi Subramaniyan, Rajendran Jayaganesh
Brucine is the second abundant alkaloid constituent of semen strychnine, which is much less toxic. The LD50 values of strychnine and brucine were determined to be 1.10 and 50.10 mg/kg, respectively (Ma et al. 1994). Brucine is obtained from seeds of Strychnosnux‐vomica the family of Loganiaceae, and is a traditional medicine for the treatment of various diseases like rheumatic pain, diabetes, anaemia, cancer, and bronchitis (Bisset and Phillipson 1971). There are no reports on the chemopreventive or anticancer effect of brucine. Hence the present study was designed to investigate the chemopreventive effect of brucine against 7, 12-dimethylbenz (a) anthracene induced mammary tumorigenesis in rats.
Developments in drug delivery of bioactive alkaloids derived from traditional Chinese medicine
Published in Drug Delivery, 2018
Xiao Zheng, Fei Wu, Xiao Lin, Lan Shen, Yi Feng
Third, another bioactive alkaloid, brucine, showed potent antitumor activities such as inhibiting Michigan Cancer Foundation-7 human breast cancer (MCF-7) cells growth (Philippe et al., 2004; Agrawal et al., 2011). On the other hand, its violent toxicity to central nervous system (CNS) has been a major obstacle to its clinical application (Chen et al., 2012). Moreover, high-dose brucine could lead to remarkable rise of blood pressure and even death (Malone et al., 1992). It is pretty advantageous for brucine to be delivered by long-circulating liposomes in terms of longer retention time in blood and thus, being less distributed into brain (Zhang et al., 2012). In addition, phosphatidylcholines (PCs) with high gel-liquid crystalline transition temperature (Tm) could enhance the stability of liposomes in the blood (Senior & Gregoriadis, 1982), due to the fact that at Tm the lipidic bilayer loses much of its ordered packing and, meanwhile, its fluidity and permeability increase. To prove these, Chen et al. (2012) developed a brucine-loaded stealth liposome (BSL) comprised of several types of membrane components. The in vitro assays showed that in rat plasma, HSPC-containing BSL showed the lowest drug release rate (15.56% ± 1.04%) at 10 h, merely accounting for about 1/5 of that from SPC-containing BSL. In principle, the in vivo result was in accordance with that found in vitro. Furthermore, the LD50 of HSPC-BSL intravenously administered to mice was about 1.37-fold larger than that obtained by the SPC-BSL group. In conclusion, HSPC-BSL with a higher Tm showed a more stable behavior compared to SPC-BSL. A similar trend was also found in the study of Li et al. (2013).