Researchers from the School of Chinese Medicine at Hong Kong Baptist University are looking at a traditional folk remedy to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic diseases.
A certain type of Chinese ant (Polyrhacis lamellidens for you scientific types) has long been used in Chinese folk medicine to treat chronic conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and hepatitis. For centuries, the little ant has been used as a painkiller and an anti-inflammatory agent to help reduce the symptoms of various chronic diseases.
The study from the School of Chinese Medicine at Hong Kong Baptist University looked at extracts made from the ants. Researchers found two substances that may indeed have painkilling and anti-inflammatory effects! These two substances have been named polyrhacitide A and polyrhacitide B after the genus of the Chinese ant.
So far, researchers have not tested the ant extract or either of the polyrhacitides on human subjects suffering from rheumatoid arthritis or hepatitis. Further study will be needed before any human trials can get started. First, researchers will need to perform lab tests on polyrhacitides A and B. Next comes animal testing — many remedies that work on animals or in the lab end up being unsuccessful with human subjects.
But I think it’s pretty wonderful that the world is full of amazing things in unusual places. Antibiotics developed from alligator blood? Clay and mud that can kill drug-resistant superbugs? Ants that ease arthritis? I can’t even begin to imagine what wacky discovery will be next.
It may be worth taking a look at other folk remedies to see what applications they may have for modern medicine, too. Sure, some herbs that were touted as a cure-all hundreds of years ago have little proven effect. But others (like willow bark, which led to the creation of today’s aspirin) truly are beneficial.