Herbal drug out of bounds for diabetics
Kalpana Jain, TNN 8 October 2004, 03:28am IST
NEW DELHI: India has the largest number of diabetics in the world - an estimated 40 million. World's largest diabetes epidemic is threatening India. And changes in lifestyle are putting many more at risk.And yet, a herbal product, Vijaysar - obtained from the bark of a tree, is yet to reach the patients.Vijaysar, extracted from the plant Pterocarpus marsupium, has shown positive results in the treatment of diabetes in several trials conducted by the ICMR. All the results were encouraging.It's benefits were all the more significant for patients who were not responding to conventional drugs. There were no side-effects.In trying to get this knowledge out into the public domain two young scientists lost their lives.The two, while searching forests for the bark of the tree, fell prey to cerebral malaria. Unfortunately, the drug still remains out of bounds for diabetics.ICMR scientists offer several reasons for it, the foremost being that scientists are not the right people for pushing such research to its logical conclusion.Not that ICMR did not contact pharmaceutical companies, but no one took it up for various reasons.
No comments:
Post a Comment