傳統(tǒng)的湯羹具有治療瘧疾的功效

傳統(tǒng)的湯羹具有治療瘧疾的功效

What's the universal remedy for the common cold? Chicken soup, of course. But there might be even more truth to this old adage than personal experience might have you believe.

治療普通感冒的萬能藥是什么?當(dāng)然是雞湯了。但這句古老的格言可能比你的個人經(jīng)歷更有道理。

Soups have long been heralded for their healing properties. (Photo: Claus Ableiter [CC BY-SA 3.0]/Wiki Commons)

New research recently published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood looked at traditional soup broths from around the world to see if any others might have sickness-fighting properties, and in the process a new treatment for one of the world's most devastating diseases, malaria, might have been inadvertently discovered, reports Medical News Today.

最近在《兒童疾病檔案》雜志上發(fā)表的一項(xiàng)新的研究從世界各地看了傳統(tǒng)的湯溴，以了解是否有其他人可能患有疾病抵抗性質(zhì)，據(jù)“今日醫(yī)學(xué)新聞”報道，在這個過程中，一種治療世界上最具破壞性的疾病之一瘧疾的新療法可能是不經(jīng)意間被發(fā)現(xiàn)的。

The team, led by professor Jake Baum from the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, asked pupils from various ethnic backgrounds in a primary school in London to bring them samples of homemade traditional soups. In total, 60 soups with attested fever-reducing properties were brought in for analysis. The recipes were derived from regions as far-ranging as Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

這個由英國倫敦帝國理工學(xué)院的杰克·鮑姆教授領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的研究小組，讓倫敦一所小學(xué)里來自不同種族背景的學(xué)生給他們帶一些自制的傳統(tǒng)湯的樣品?？偣灿?0種湯被證實(shí)有退燒的功效。這些配方來自歐洲、北非和中東等地區(qū)。

Baum was especially interested in testing these soups against infection with malaria because the newest antimalarial drug, called artemisinin, was originally derived from a traditional Chinese herb, qinghao. Soups with qinghao have been used for more than 2,000 years in China to treat malaria-related fevers. So, the professor was hoping that perhaps there might be other important soup ingredients from around the world that science has overlooked in its search for remedies to this deadly disease.

鮑姆特別感興趣的是對這些湯進(jìn)行抗瘧疾感染的測試，因?yàn)樽钚碌目汞懰幥噍锼刈畛跏怯梢环N傳統(tǒng)中藥青蒿制成的。2000多年來，中國一直使用清湯來治療瘧疾相關(guān)的發(fā)燒。因此，這位教授希望，也許在尋找這種致命疾病的治療方法的過程中，世界各地可能還有其他重要的湯食材被科學(xué)忽略了。

Filtered extracts from the soups were incubated with different cultures of malaria-causing parasites to see if the soups would stop their growth. After just 72 hours, Baum and colleagues found with amazement that five of the 60 soups had stopped the in vitro growth of P. falciparum, the world's deadliest malarial parasite, by more than 50%. A couple of these soups showed results comparable to dihydroartemisinin, a leading antimalarial drug already on the market.

從湯中過濾出來的提取物與不同的瘧原蟲培養(yǎng)菌一起培養(yǎng)，看看湯是否會阻止它們的生長。72小時后，鮑姆和同事驚奇地發(fā)現(xiàn)，60種湯中的5種已經(jīng)使世界上最致命的瘧原蟲——惡性瘧原蟲的體外生長停止了50%以上。其中一些湯劑的效果可與雙氫青蒿素相媲美，雙氫青蒿素是目前市場上領(lǐng)先的抗瘧藥。

Four other broths were found to show 50% transmission blocking activity, preventing male parasite sexual stage development.

另外四種寄生蟲顯示出50%的傳播阻斷活性，阻止了雄性寄生蟲的性發(fā)育階段。

These results were far beyond what was expected. These are just soups from a few handful of households around London; imagine if researchers had pooled from an even more extensive sample size worldwide.

這些結(jié)果遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出了預(yù)期。這些只是倫敦附近幾個家庭的湯;想象一下，如果研究人員從世界范圍內(nèi)更廣泛的樣本中匯集起來。

The team was quick to note that they don't know exactly what the key malaria-fighting ingredients were within these soups; they were all complex soups with many ingredients. Isolating the ingredients one-by-one will be the next step in their study. It was mentioned, however, that a variety of broth bases were used among the most effective soups, ranging from vegetable based, to beef or chicken based. (Of course some of them were chicken based, right?)

研究小組很快指出，他們不知道這些湯里到底有什么關(guān)鍵的抗瘧疾成分;它們都是有很多配料的復(fù)雜湯。下一步的研究將是把這些成分一一分離出來。然而，有人提到，在最有效的湯中使用了多種肉湯，從蔬菜湯到牛肉湯或雞肉湯。(當(dāng)然有些是雞肉做的，對吧?)

"At a time when there is a resurgent voice against evidence-based medicine, such exercises have great importance for educating the next generation about how new drugs are discovered, how they might work, and how untapped resources still exist in the fight against global diseases of significance," the authors concluded.

“在對循證醫(yī)學(xué)有再緊急的聲音的時候，這樣的鍛煉對于教育下一代關(guān)于新藥物是如何被發(fā)現(xiàn)的，它們是如何起作用的，以及在抗擊具有重要意義的全球疾病的斗爭中，尚未開發(fā)的資源如何存在的問題是非常重要的。”作者得出結(jié)論。

While we await further results from follow-up studies, and as we approach that annual flu season, don't scoff at your family's traditional remedies. There might be more medical magic hidden within Grandma's chicken soup than you ever thought possible.

當(dāng)我們等待后續(xù)研究的進(jìn)一步結(jié)果，當(dāng)我們接近每年的流感季節(jié)，不要嘲笑你的家人的傳統(tǒng)療法。奶奶的雞湯里可能隱藏著比你想象中更多的醫(yī)學(xué)魔力。