BEFORE WE PROVIDE OUR RESPECTED READER WITH
SOME REALLY INTERESTING INFORMATION ABOUT MEDICINES DERIVED FROM RAINFOREST, WE WOULD LIKE TO STATE THE FOLLOWING:
Forests are “the greatest expression of Life on Earth” and have intrinsic value.
Just to have an opportunity to simply live, while being surrounded by this absolutely incredible diversity, must bring the sensation of profound gratitude to us - humans. To be alive in the presence of such natural beauty and abundance is already a great gift.
A very preoccupying socially conditioned mind trait is that everything around exists solely for us to derive benefits from, to use, to exploit, to own... though deep inside each of us knows : we own nothing, we are mere spectacles here, and our goal is to take care and enhance the magnificent beauty of a natural world. We are here to learn from Nature, to explore Her wonders and mysteries, to share the knowledge and wisdom, to enjoy the path and always remember: Nature has value in its own right, independent of human uses.
Nature is a healer per se, we just have to learn from Her by being careful observers and very good listeners. This is not some old-fashioned appeal! A rapidly evolving modern science “biomimicry” studies nature as a source of great wisdom, “it mimics the strategies found in nature to solve human challenges – and find hope along the way”. (1)
The principle of observing and listening to Nature and finding cures for different ailments does not only lie at the core of Traditional Medicine of Amazon, Ayurveda, and other ancient medicine systems, but, don’t be surprised, even modern medicine, which is still hugely influenced by ethnobotanical research.
Ethnobotany is defined as the study of the relationship between people and plants, and most commonly refers to the study of indigenous uses of plants. In other words, it is the marriage between cultural anthropology and botany, a study that investigates the roles of plants as medicine, nourishment, natural resources or “gateways to the gods”. (2)
As you’ll see later, we aren’t only talking about plants here, but also animals and microorganisms, that are successfully studied for the development of modern medicines, that are already saving and will save millions of lives worldwide. Natural products from plants, microbes and animals [ahimsa!] contribute to about half of the pharmaceuticals in use today! (3)
LET'S GIVE A LOOK AT SOME INSPIRING EXAMPLES
FROM AMAZON RAINFOREST.
Vampire Bats (Desmodus rotundus).
These nocturnal animals feed solely on blood, thus the name.
Little buddies have some issues to obtain their meal (blood tends to coagulate rapidly), therefore they have to use some evolutionary “tricks”, to be sure not to stay hungry. Their so-called “feeding secretions” (saliva, which scientist also name “a type of venom”) possess strong anticoagulation and vasodilation properties which delay formation of blood clots enabling a constant blood flow for feeding. Bats’ “venom” contains two important anticoagulant toxins: DSPA (boring scientific name)…. and Draculin (creative, no?). (4)
These compounds are extensively studied as a potential treatment for stroke and heart attacks.
(Do you remember which is the number one cause of deaths around the world? Yes. Cardio-vascular diseases).
Over 2500 species of animals
The Golden Poison Dart Frog (Phyllobates terriblis).
This tiny (1 inch/ 2,54 cm) extremely endangered amphibian secrets enough poison from its skin which can kill over 10 people in 3 minutes, or thousand humans per gram. It is the world’s most toxic creature [discovered till now] and can be found only in a small and remote area of Colombian Amazon. (5)
Indigenous people Chocó were using frog's secretions to rub their blowguns’ darts across amphibian's back, usually when it was held close to fire (without killing the animal). Thanks to Chocó’s knowledge about this incredible animal, scientists were able to actually study it without accidentally killing themselves by simply holding the frog in their hands… (6)
The poisonous substance excreted by Mr. Terriblis is called batrachotoxin and was synthesized in a lab by the group of scientists couple of years ago.
You may ask: “What for? This is so dangerous!”
Well, it ended up to be a fantastic tool to figure out how nerves in our body conduct electricity, and also to understand the role electric impulses play in heart function and the sensation of pain. "Molecules like batrachotoxin are essentially a key into mechanisms of how our nervous system works," says Toto Olivera, a biochemist and neuroscientist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute who is based at the University of Utah. (7)
So, what does this all mean? To start, the possibility of developing an extremely potent pain killer. Who knows, maybe one day this tiny creature could become a solution to the ongoing opioid pain killers’ addiction crises all over the world.
Curare (Chondrodendron tomentosum).
This native to Amazon vine is one of the main plants used by Indigenous people to prepare arrow poisons. They dip hunting darts in it, to use for hunting. When the poison gets into the blood stream of an animal it causes asphyxia (respiratory arrest), by relaxing the muscles of a pray: diaphragm, so the lungs stop functioning. Interesting enough, curare does not affect humans ingesting poisoned animal, because it is not absorbed in a stomach.
The research of the poison for medicinal use revolutionized medical anesthesia. (8)
Modern medicine is using certain curare alkaloids to:
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induce skeletal muscle relaxation under general anesthesia (surgeries!),
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facilitate endotracheal intubation (Covid-19 pandemic brought the knowledge of what it is to all of us),
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relieve contractions and convulsions (those that occur in tetanus),
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help patients with neuromuscular disorders (myasthenia gravis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, etc.).
Unfortunately, as it often happens, modern scientists extract “the main” active chemical disregarding the whole potency of a plant.
Amazon natives use curare to treat many health issues, for example: to reduce fever, increase urination, treat kidney stones, edema, etc..
Over 390 billion individual trees
Quinine (Cinchona officinalis).
Cinchona ("quina-quina") tree bark is one of the most important discoveries. It contains quinine, an important anti-malarial drug for more than 400 years after its effectiveness was first documented, and continues to play a significant role in the management of malaria nowadays (9), the disease which affects hundreds of millions (!) worldwide yearly (!) [228 million cases just in 2018]. (10) .
Hydroxychloroquine, derivative of chloroquine, which was developed based on the structure of quinine, is widely used not only as a remedy for certain malaria types, but also as a first line treatment for lupus; rheumatoid arthritis, Q fever and other diseases which you do not want to have. This drug was granted a place on WHO’s List of Essential Medicines, which contains the most effective and safe medications to meet the most important needs in a health system.
Curios observation.
Since the time of its wide application, synthesized in 1944 quinine started to lose its potency, because malaria strains have evolved and developed resistance towards synthetic version of medicine. Not surprisingly, scientists came back to the original quinine bark extracts. And guess what? Cinchona bark, derived from Nature, demonstrated effectiveness against evolved resistant pathogens. Can it be one of many reasons why WHO started to treat traditional medicine with deserved respect, “not only as an “input” to modern pharmaceutical research, but also as a source of effective treatment in its own right”? (11)
Microorganisms.
Although the development of medicines from natural products has historically focused on plants, microbes, as the most diverse organisms on Earth, are likely to become the most important sources for new pharmaceuticals in coming years. It is estimated that less than 1% of all microbial flora has been investigated so far, but even this figure probably a significant overestimate, because the microorganisms - present in most environments - have barely been studied. (12)
And now imagine the Amazon…
If we know close to nothing about plants in there, how much do we know about microorganisms that inhabit the Forest? 1 gram of Amazonian soil contains 100 million microbes, 10.000 different species. (13)
Just. One. Gram.
Microbes, type bacteria, are reservoirs of new antibiotics.
Today, 80% of the antibiotics are sourced from the genus Streptomyces (a genus of Gram-positive bacteria), actinomycetes being the most important. (14)
You all heard about Tuberculosis. With the possible exception of malaria, tuberculosis has probably killed more people than any other single disease. (15)
Antibiotic Streptomycin isolated from the bacterium Streptomyces griseus was highly effective against the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. However, resistance to Streptomycin soon appeared. (12) Today, multidrug resistant TB affects half a million people annually, takes two years to treat, and is cured in only half of the cases. (16)
To accelerate the development of new treatments, it is very important to collect microorganisms in different environments, for the isolation of new substances. The Amazon Biotechnology Center - CBA, for example, is showing promising results regarding bacteria that causes tuberculosis. The Center has high capacity to produce new antibiotics. For some time now, it has been studying microorganisms in the Amazon region, with its high diversity of microorganisms.
The problem is, that there is no such thing as having enough of antibiotics, because any new drug will probably be useless in 10 to 20 years. (17)
Resistance to virtually all antibiotics has increased [#FarmedAnimals #Self-medication].
By 2050, drug resistant infections are predicted to become the biggest cause of human death. (18)
The world's demand for novel antibacterials is growing, but the capacity to discover novel medicines is under threat. Changing the land from forest to pasture (which is the main driver of destruction of the Amazon) is changing the biodiversity, too. With the proliferation of deforestation, microbial communities in the Amazonian soil are increasing in similarity, they are becoming more and more equal to each other genetically, they are becoming more and more the same… (19)
Given the role microbes play as mediators in many important ecosystem functions, the loss of microbial diversity can trigger a cascading negative effect on other inhabitants of the Forest.
Over 30 million insects that are yet to be discovered.
Ants.
Many ants carry various defensive poisons and repellents, for they need to protect themselves from bacterial and fungal parasites, as well as other insect species, animals and birds.
Ants are one of the most diverse, abundant and ecologically important animals in tropical forest ecosystems. (20)
In the Amazon Rainforest they are literally everywhere. Ants basically run the place!
Just on a single tropical tree, there are over 40 species of ants! Approximately equal to the entire ant fauna of all habitats on the British Isles! (21)
Some scientists estimate that 30% of the animal biomass of the entire Amazon Basin is made up of ants. (22) And, of course, as always in the case with Amazon, only the small fraction have been described by scientists so far.
With the growing threat of antibiotic resistance researches turned their attention towards these little fellows, too.
For example, Attine ants - the leafcutters among them- are ancient farmers that have been growing their own food for over 50 million years. They grow a symbiotic fungus as food and cultivate it in underground chambers known as fungus gardens. (23)
Their underground crops fuel complex, agriculturally-based societies that are not only sustainable and efficient, but also resistant to diseases and pests. (24)
These ants are incredibly resourceful in the way they use antibiotics to prevent fungal diseases from killing their fungus gardens, which would ultimately kill the whole ant colony, because this fungus provides the only food source for their larvae and queen, which are crucial for the survival of the colony.
Interesting enough, leafcutter ants have been using antibiotics for millions of years without any issue of antimicrobial resistance. While we -humans- are struggling with AMR constantly. Isn’t it a very humbling acknowledgment: these tiny buddies became our great teachers?
The worker ants grow the actinomycete bacteria on the surface of their bodies and feed them through specialized glands. The bacteria have been passed down from generation to generation by the ant queens along with their symbiotic fungus, over tens of millions of years! This is potentially useful to humans, because the co-evolved with ants bacteria make antibiotics that are new to science and could eventually be used to treat antimicrobial resistant infections in humans. (23)
Another example.
Fire ants venom (specifically, genera Solenopsis and Monomorium). It consists of special alkaloids which demonstrated antibiotic and insecticidal activity. Recent medical trials have shown that it is a potent new blood vessels growth inhibitor *,
that could be used to restrict the flow of blood to tumors. (25)
Examples described above are just a glimpse into the vast world of potential medicine discoveries.
Considering the unprecedented richness of Amazonian biodiversity just imagine what we can find there! If only we have a chance to leave the Forest standing…
*New blood vessels “feed” growing tumors with oxygen and nutrients, allowing the tumor to enlarge and the cancer cells to invade nearby tissue, to move throughout the body, and to form new colonies of cancer cells, called metastases. (26)
Sources used:
1) https://biomimicry.org/what-is-biomimicry/
2) https://www.science20.com/humboldt_fellow_and_science/blog/what_ethnobotany-79277
3) https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/ethnobotany
4) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6356263/
5) https://www.theguardian.com/news/video/2015/jun/29/golden-poison-frog-colombia-video
6) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/the-terrible-leaf-walker-frog/
8) https://www.nybg.org/blogs/science-talk/2015/01/curare-from-the-rain-forest-to-the-operating-room/
9) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3121651/
11) https://www.who.int/intellectualproperty/topics/traditional/en/
12) Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School. Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
13) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAl82gFMZis
14) https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-86702012000500011
15) Plotkin, Mark J. Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature’s Healing Secrets. New York: Viking Penguin, 2000.
16) https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/52/4/1801350
17) https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2017/07/20/a_world_without_antibiotics_110679.html
18) https://www.uea.ac.uk/research/brilli-ant
19) https://www.pnas.org/content/110/3/988
20) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340929/
21) The Arboreal Ant Fauna of Peruvian Amazon Forests: A First Assessment Edward O. Wilson Biotropica Vol. 19, No. 3 (Sep., 1987), pp. 245-251 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2388342?seq=1
22) https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/insects.html
23) https://www.uea.ac.uk/research/brilli-ant
24) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-ants-became-worlds-best-fungus-farmers-180962871/
25) https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/fire-ants
26) https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/types/immunotherapy/angiogenesis-inhibitors-fact-sheet
Photos used:
1) Huaorani girl : https://www.prlog.org/12424941-ecuadors-tropic-teams-with-pack-for-purpose-to-bring-childrens-books-to-remote-sites.html
2) The Blood Forest by Philippe Echaroux : www.philippe-echaroux.com
3) Vampire Bat
4) The Golden Poison Dart Frog : www.aimishboy.com (left); www.proaves.org (right).
5) Curare : http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/2011/kobishop_bria/gallery.htm
6) Quinine : http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:58723-2
7) Huaorani Tribe in the Amazon by Andrew Rowat : http://andrewrowat.com/blog/2012/07/10/conde-nast-traveller-august-2012-feature-huaorani-tribe-in-the-amazon/
8) Leafcutter Ant : https://www.forbes.com/sites/linhanhcat/2019/04/09/fungus-growing-ants-carry-antibiotics/#33a50fa81cb9
9) Up to the Light : Maathru.
May 19, 2020
Viktoria Miranovich.