Bitter foods may one day be useful as an asthma treatment according to research presented at the 2011 meeting of the American Thoracic Society. The bitter tasting compounds tested were as good as or better than current medications for asthma.
"We have identified compounds that are more potent than our previously identified set of compounds, paving the way for development of bronchodilators for treating asthma and COPD," said study author Kathryn Robinett, MD, pulmonary and critical care fellow at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "These compounds represent a new class of bronchodilator that work through an entirely different mechanism than beta-agonists like albuterol, salmeterol and formoterol."
To date most of the research has been done in animal models of asthma, but a small number of human studies of bitter compounds demonstrate that the compounds appear to be somewhat more effective than beta-agonists. Importantly, these medications act on different parts of the pathophysiology of asthma. Because of this, these compounds will one day be able to be used in addition to currently available treatments.
We continue to be amazed at the breadth of substances that activate these receptors," Dr. Robinett said. "The plant world is packed with agents that can be effective therapeutics at these targets, or can provide us with the 'molecular backbone' to synthesize compounds that would be better drugs."
The main task ahead is to identify which compounds work best. "There are over 10,000 compounds that are known to be bitter taste receptor agonists," she said. "These come from plants, including medicinal herbs and food additives, or are synthetic agents that are used for entirely different medical reasons (such as chloroquine for treating malaria). So, we have not only uncovered a previously unrecognized way to open the airways in asthma and COPD, but we have many compounds to consider either 'as they are,' or as backbones for synthesizing a new agent."
"Our challenge, then," Dr. Robinett continued, "is to find safe agents that are not so bitter-tasting as to make them unpalatable, and yet are able to affect the degree of relaxation of airway smooth-muscle that we have found in experimental models.
"Our immediate focus is to gain a better understanding of second messenger pathways and desensitization of bitter taste receptors, to continue to search for more agonists, and to carry out toxicology studies on selected compounds," Dr. Robinett said. "Then, with a set of our 'best compounds' we will begin the process for Phase 1 clinical trials."
I find this both very interesting, but also potentially scary. I am all for development of new asthma meds, but am a little worried as I could see a future where companies are developing botanicals that are not regulated by FDA. I have the same worries related to primatene mist. As ya'll probably know, much of what you get at health food stores is not regulated and does not all go through the same types of quality controls.
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It seems to me that it`s much better to use natural plants and herbs to treat asthma than chemistry that cause side effects.