Nigeria’s plants provide cures for global diseases

Nigeria's reputation as a global centre for drug discovery has received another boost with the announcement of a research utilising tea leaves and fruit from the wild, which is showing positive results against type-2 diabetes.

The research, conducted at the University of Copenhagen and published in Alphagalileo, said the researchers at the University harvested the ingredients for the tea, totalling approximately fifty kilos of leaves and three hundred kilos of fruits, from the wild in Nigeria.

As scientists and researchers direct their attention to natural products to combat the growing global disease burden, they are discovering the wealth within Nigeria-the country with the largest moist equatorial forest and plant endemism in Africa.

Of 150,000 plant species or higher plants estimated to be present in tropical countries, about 30,000 are found in Africa. Nigeria accounts for three quarter of the African estimate.

Currently, tea leaves and other fruits from Nigeria's wild are undergoing various investigations in laboratories across the world in an attempt to find solution to some of the diseases that have ravaged humanity.

The University of Copenhagen treated the tea exactly as local healers would do: boil the leaves, young stalks and fruit and filter the liquid.

The researchers, including a Nigerian, Joan Campbell-Toftel, tested the tea on genetically diabetic mice. The results of the tests, according to the scientists, shows that six weeks of daily treatment with the African tea, combined with a low-fat diet, resulted in changes in the combination and amount of fat in the animals' eyes and protection of the fragile pancreas of the mice.

The researchers have also recently completed a four-month clinical test on 23 patients with type-2 diabetes and expressed satisfaction with the result.

The research subjects drank 750ml of tea each day. The cure appears to differentiate itself from other current type-2 diabetes treatments because the tea does not initially affect the sugar content of the blood," said Mr. Campbell-Tofte. "But after four months of treatment with tea, we can, however, see a significant increase in glucose tolerance."

From sickle cell to HIV

In 2004, some leaves from Nigeria had, against all odds, brought relief to sickle cell sufferers across the globe when researchers at the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), banking on indigenous knowledge of the use of herbs, produced NIPRISAN, a potent drug for the management of sickle cell.

The drug was acknowledged by former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, at a ceremony to mark its formal launch, in 2007, as the only potent treatment of sickle cell globally. The achievement was picked up by an American company, Xechem International Pharmaceutical Company, which bought the right from the Nigerian government to mass produce and market the drug now known as NICOSAN.

The license granted the company by government was withdrawn in March 2009, following the inability of the company to meet conditions contained in the agreement regarding the availability and affordability of the drug.

Currently, NIPRD and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA, are collaborating on a research using Nigerian leaves, which is showing good signs in the treatment of Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

"US and Nigerian scientists at NIPRD are currently engaged in a joint research activity to test the efficacy of remedies for tuberculosis used by traditional healers in Nigeria. It is our hope that this collaboration continues and results in better therapeutic products," US Ambassador to Nigeria, Robin Sanders, said recently.

At the Institute for Advanced Medical Research Training, University of Ibadan, research has advanced on a discovery capable of reducing the global malaria mortality, which currently accounts for over two million deaths annually.

Edith Ajaiyeoba of the Department of Pharmcognosy at the University of Ibadan said the prospect of new drugs coming out of Nigeria's wild was brighter now than ever, in view of collaboration with other international research laboratories.

William Folk, principal investigator at the International Centre for Indigenous Phytotherapy Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia, said he was optimistic that the possibility of developing a natural based drug for HIV/AIDS from the wild of Africa was high.

"In West Africa, there are well documented uses of indigenous plant spices used to treat malaria, diarrhoea, fever, pneumonia, tuberculosis, cryptococcal meningitis, oral candidiasis, herpes and other STI infections," he said.

Muhammed Gwarzo of Bayero University, Kano. Mr. Gwarzo said Nigerian herbs administered by traditional healers to HIV-infected individuals has shown that the herbals, if properly evaluated, would provide a cure to the dreaded virus.

An anti-tuberculosis drug research conducted at NIPRD, by Nneka Ibekwe and others, also showed that of the 86 plants-based recipes used by Nigerian traditional medicine practitioners for the treatment of tuberculosis, about 60 percent were active from weak to high degrees.

Inyang Uford, Director General of NIPRD, said the institute was in the vanguard of investigating plant species based on ethnomedical information. "The potentials and efficacy of Nigeria's leaves is no longer in doubt but how the country prepares itself to spearhead and encourage research into the wild to ensure it benefits from the global multi-billion dollar drug industry is what is at stake," he said.