Posted on 12/09/2007 3:23:51 PM PST by blam
Birthwort Plant's Dark Side: Contaminated Grain Linked To Kidney Disease And Cancer In Balkan Countries
Seeds from birthwort plant is contaminating the wheat grain in the Balkan region, leading to a devastating kidney disease affecting rural residents in that region. (Credit: Image courtesy of Stony Brook University Medical Center)
ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2007) — Seeds from birthwort (Aristolochia clematis), a plant which grows in wheat fields in the Balkan region and which has been used throughout Europe and Asia as an herbal remedy for 2000 years, is contaminating the wheat grain, leading to a devastating kidney disease affecting rural residents in that region, a study led by Dr. Arthur Grollman of Stony Brook University suggests.
Endemic (Balkan) nephropathy (EN), a kidney disease found in farming villages in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Serbia, progresses rapidly to chronic renal failure and is strongly associated with upper urinary tract cancer.
To investigate the environmental source of this disease, Dr. Arthur Grollman, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacological Sciences at Stony Brook University Medical Center, and his colleagues in the US, in collaboration with researchers in Croatia, analyzed DNA samples obtained from renal tissues of patients affected by the disease. The researchers detected DNA damage caused by a chemical called aristolochic acid in patients with EN but not in patients with other forms of chronic kidney disease. They also discovered the mutational fingerprint of aristolochic acid in a gene associated with EN-related urinary tract cancer.
Because this toxin is produced by the Aristolochia clematitis, or birthwort, plant, which is native to the region, Dr. Grollman and his colleagues postulate that contamination of grain with seeds of this plant, leading to chronic dietary poisoning, is the cause of endemic nephropathy.
This finding has significant implications for strategies to eliminate EN from the Balkan peninsula and for dealing with kidney disease in other areas where the plant is used in traditional herbal remedies. Additionally, by bringing to bear genomics, pathology, environmental sciences, biochemistry, and clinical medicine, Dr. Grollman has created an important approach for research in other environmental diseases.
Journal Article: Aristolochic acid and the etiology of endemic (Balkan) nephropathy, by Arthur P. Grollman, Shinya Shibutani, Masaaki Moriya, Fredrick Miller, Lin Wu, Ute Moll, Naomi Suzuki, Andrea Fernandes, Thomas Rosenquist, Zvonimir Medverec, Krunoslav Jakovina, Branko Brdar, Neda Slade, Robert J. Turesky, Angela K. Goodenough, Robert Rieger, Mato Vukelic, and Bojan Jelakovic, and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (July 17).
Adapted from materials provided by Stony Brook University Medical Center.
Grain molds caused all manner of sickness and death in the Bad Old Days.
However it’s seeds from this plant, that apparently grows in wheatfields, that causes this particular trouble.
We could use some help from any farmboy FReepers out there, but I gather modern farming methods don’t allow for weeds to grow in the rows. Apparently, in that region no one ever saw this plant as a menace until now.
Certainly there should have been deaths all along if it was this “weed”...a plant in the wrong place.
Some thoughts:
l. Could farming practices been altered so that this weed is now more common in the harvested wheat?
2. Wheat is planted in the US using what are called grain drills. The “rows” are very close together and I would never call them rows. I’m not even sure how far apart they are set. But it is just a couple of inches.
3. The only farming practice that has caught on in recent memory is “no till”. They don’t plow things up, the just plant over the old crop and then use herbicides to kill the unwanted crop that comes up beside it.
4. Could be a totally different source that birthwart.
Needs more research. Please ping me.
Freeper Entomologist Battle Axe
ping
KUDZU
not a very scientific comment, I know. But hey, it's Sunday.
~/;>()
“DNA samples obtained from renal tissues of patients affected by the disease. The researchers detected DNA damage caused by a chemical called aristolochic acid in patients with EN but not in patients with other forms of chronic kidney disease. They also discovered the mutational fingerprint of aristolochic acid in a gene associated with EN-related urinary tract cancer.”
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I guess the technology to trace the cause did not exist till now. First they had to recognize this aristolochic acid as the culprit in the disease, link it to the plant and trace the “Mutational fingerprint” (I have no idea how that is done) to EN-related urinary tract cancer.
Old-fashioned epidemiologic detective work combined with newfangled technology.
KUDZU gives us Arrowroot starch, kudzu good.
There would have had to have been a higher than normal incidence of renal failure for a long period of time.
“Endemic (Balkan) nephropathy (EN), a kidney disease found in farming villages in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Serbia, progresses rapidly to chronic renal failure and is strongly associated with upper urinary tract cancer.”
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Looks like this may have been a fact of life there for centuries and only now did the aforementioned scientists give up on an infectuous agent and start running down the list of possible environmental causes.
I hope that is it. They should be able to sift out the bad seeds........
“farming villages in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Serbia”
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Note that they say “farming villages” so we can presume Ye Olde Fashioned traditional farming methods in use there.
Heck, they still believe in vampires there.
They’re going to HAVE do something about the problem and quickly now that the secrets out.
See, there’s this little thing called capitalism going around now...
Ethanol source?
I was thinking they are just coming up with that now?
The only other thing I could think of would be that there had always been this endemic problem, and people attributed it to family or lifestyle or the area, and just wrote it off.
I don’t know how they come up with mutant stuff. Does the body metabolize it into something similar??
vampires......and marrying your cousin?
Don’t start feeling too superior. We still believe in man made global warming here.
I don’t either.
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