VITAMIN D CAN HEAL TUBERCULOSIS?

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http://www.newswithviews.com/Howenstine/james69.htm

 

 

 

By Dr. James Howenstine, MD.

September 2, 2008

 

NewsWithViews.com

 

Tuberculosis remains a serious health problem around the world. In 2003 it was

estimated that 1,700,000 persons died from tuberculosis. Many of these deaths

occurred in persons suffering from HIV infections who had badly damaged immune

systems.

 

The traditional drugs (isoniazide, streptomycin, rifampin, ethambutol,

pyrazinamide, ethionamide, cycloserine) used to treat tuberculosis have been

handicapped by the mycobacterium tuberculosis organisms' ability to develop

bacterial resistance. To compound this problem, many of the drugs used in

tuberculosis therapy have significant side effects which commonly cause patients

to drop out of treatment programs. Therapy for drug-resistant tuberculosis

patients may take 18 to 24 months to complete and can cost $250,000 annually.

Few countries can afford this expense. The term XDR-TB has been applied to

patients who are resistant to first and second line tuberculosis drugs.

 

Many patients and physicians are terrified of tuberculosis because the disease

is contagious. Unfortunately, there is a social stigma associated to

tuberculosis which frequently causes an individual to lose nearly all their

friends when word gets out that they have the disease. The incidence of

tuberculosis is increased by poverty, overcrowding, alcoholism, HIV, and drug

addiction.

 

Lack of vitamin D has always been found among the elderly and the housebound.

Deficiency of vitamin D is related to higher rates of breast, ovary, colon, and

prostate cancer; increased incidence of multiple sclerosis, progression of

osteoarthritis, impairment of the immune response, high blood pressure, mood

disorders including serious depression, Type 1 diabetes, and tuberculosis. Lack

of vitamin D appears to be a prime factor in the rising incidence of depression

along with a lack of omega 3 fatty acids. Patients with Parkinson's Disease,

multiple sclerosis, congestive heart failure, and Alzheimer's Disease have all

been found to have significant deficits of vitamin D.

 

New Ideas about Vitamin D

 

Influenza has long been considered to be an epidemic disease that appears in the

middle of the winter. This happens to be the exact time when skin exposure to

vitamin D production would be at the lowest levels in the whole year in the

northern hemisphere. The possibility has been raised that perhaps the reason

influenza is able to spread in an epidemic fashion in the winter was because

natural immunity from vitamin D production was at its lowest level of the whole

year in the winter, and not because a new strain of influenza always managed to

develop during the winter season.

 

A second important aspect of vitamin D relates to decreased vitamin D production

in persons who have dark pigmented skin when compared to lightly pigmented

individuals Dr. Plotnikoff of the Univ. of Minnesota Medical School measured

25(OH)D [calcidiol] blood levels [1] in a chronic pain clinic. He discovered

that 100% of Black, Hispanic, East African, and American Indians were vitamin D

deficient. 93% of all patients were vitamin D deficient. Young women in their

child-bearing years were at the greatest risk for not being diagnosed. Many of

these patients had been having pain for years without ever having vitamin D

levels checked. This suggests that chronic musculoskeletal pain is often caused

by vitamin D deficiency.

 

The rate of prostate cancer in black males is 3 times higher than that of white

males of equal age in the US. This may be in large part be explained by lower

vitamin D levels in blacks.

 

Advanced Drug Resistant Tuberculosis

 

Tuberculosis that has become resistant to antibiotic therapy presents a very

difficult situation for the clinician. The drugs used to treat this condition

are very toxic, quite expensive, and not universally effective. Often patients

refuse to remain on the therapy because of serious side effects including

hearing loss, dizziness, kidney damage and liver injury.

Umckaloabo Therapy of Tuberculosis

 

Charles Stevens contracted a serious form of tuberculosis in 1897 at age 17

while residing in South Africa. He made a dramatic recovery [2] after being

started on the herb umckaloabo from the root of the plant pelargonium reniforme.

A second patient, 26 year old Morris Vaughn, was in Talgarth Sanitarium in Wales

dying from bilateral tuberculosis. He frequently coughed up bloody sputum. After

deciding to try umckaloabo he proceeded to recover and was able to obtain life

insurance, marry, and teach chemistry until age 65. He died of heart failure at

age 77.

 

Umckaloabo [3] was successfully used by a friend for a patient who had extra

pulmonary tuberculosis in Chennai, India. She noticed that his fever, back pain,

and blood sugar values improved after starting umckaloabo therapy, whereas there

had been no change in his condition with either first or second line

tuberculosis drugs. His disease was located in dorsal and lumbar spine, pleura,

endobronchial, and hilar lymph nodes.

 

The knowledge that drug resistance has not interfered with the effectiveness of

umckaloabo as a tuberculosis therapy after 101 years of usage is important.

 

This herb has been a safe, established therapy for bronchitis in children for

more than fifty years in Germany. During this time, drug resistant tuberculosis

has been a major worldwide problem.

 

Chemistry and Pharmacology

 

The bioactive ingredients of Preniforme (umckaloabo) are the tri- and

tetra-oxygenated coumarins, gallic acid, and gallic acid methyl ester

(polyphenols), as well as various flavinoids. It also has high levels of calcium

and silica. Extracts of the root have been available in German pharmacies since

1985 without prescription and have found widespread use against infections of

sinuses, throat, and respiratory tract. However, it has been shown that

pelargonium sidoides [4] was even more effective in treating these problems.

 

The alcoholic extract of the has three primary effects:

 

1. Anti-bacterial: The umckaloabo extract prevents bacteria from attaching to

cells in the mucous membranes.

2. Anti-viral effect: Umckaloabo prevents viruses from attaching to the mucous

membrane cells and stimulates the body immune cells so that bacteria and viruses

are prevented from multiplying.

3. Expectorant: The extract acts as an expectorant which allows the body to

expel contaminated mucous. This makes their replication more difficult. With the

properties of being bacteriostatic and immune modulating Umckaloabo appears to a

good alternative to treating respiratory illnesses with antibiotics.

 

Normal Dosage:

 

Adults in the acute stage of infection should take 20 to 30 drops three times

daily. Children 6 to 12 years old take 10 to 20 drops three times daily, while

children from 6 months to 6 years take 5 to 10 drops daily.

 

Umckaloabo can be purchased in Germany and the US. This would be a sensible

approach for the individual with advanced tuberculosis. The German source for

Umckaloabo is Apoteke Hamburg (phone 01149 40335333). Speak with Doris Bruehl.

The US source for umckaloabo is the African Red Tea Company (phone

323-658-7832). Umckaloabo is much safer, less expensive, and more effective than

the conventional therapy for drug resistant tuberculosis.

 

The knowledge that drug resistance has not interfered with the effectiveness of

umckaloabo as a tuberculosis therapy after 111 years of use is important.

 

Current Concepts about Vitamin D Dosage

 

The currently recommended daily dosage of 400 IU of vitamin D daily appears to

be unreasonably low when we know that a light skinned individual makes 20,000

units [5] of vitamin D within 15 to 20 minutes of whole body exposure to the

summer sun (before redness appears). This 20,000 IU of vitamin D is five times

the amount of vitamin D considered capable of initiating toxic reactions by the

Institute of Medicine, demonstrating that these guidelines are set far too low.

Dark skinned individuals need 5 to 10 times longer in the sun to produce an

equivalent amount of vitamin D as Caucasians, depending on the extent of their

pigmentation.

 

Blood levels of calcidiol below 35 are found in 70% of U.S. citizens. Normal

values are considered to be between 35 and 50 ng/ml. Life guards and outdoor

persons living near the equator have values near 50 ng/ml. Toxicity from excess

vitamin D does not occur from sunlight because ultraviolet light degrades

vitamin D after 20,000 units have been produced, thus leading to a steady state

with no toxicity.

 

New Ideas about the Effects of Vitamin D in Tuberculosis

 

Gujarati Asians living in London have a high prevalence of both vitamin D

deficiency and tuberculosis. The persons with the lowest levels of vitamin D

have the highest incidence of tuberculosis. Patients with no detectable value

for vitamin D had a tenfold higher incidence of tuberculosis [6] than patients

who had low levels of vitamin D. Tuberculosis itself does not appear to lower

vitamin D levels.

 

Indonesian scientists [7] treated 70 tuberculosis patients with 10,000 units of

vitamin D daily over a 9 month treatment program. All the patients made complete

recoveries.

 

Persons of African descent are more susceptible to tuberculosis than Caucasians,

with higher rates of infections and more severe cases. Sub-Saharan Africa has

the world's highest per-capita rates of tuberculosis and death from

tuberculosis, with numbers nearly twice as high as any other region of the

world.

 

Research from UCLA [8] and the Harvard School of Public Health revealed that

vitamin D plays a key role in the production of a molecule called cathelicidin,

which kills the mycobacterium tuberculosis organism. Vitamin D is produced when

sunlight contacts the skin. Melanin pigment is abundant in dark skin and

functions to reduce damage from ultraviolet light, and to decrease the amount of

vitamin D formed in the skin.

 

Dr. Robert Modlin, lead investigator of the UCLA research team, stimulated gene

receptors and then analyzed the resulting genetic responses. They found

activation of the monocytes of vitamin D receptor (VDR) previously known to be

associated with antimicrobial activity. A second genetic activation involved

gene Cyp which causes an enzyme to convert vitamin D to its active form,

1-25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1-25 D3). The gene which encodes vitamin D receptors

was expressed on the surface of macrophages. Activation of this receptor changed

vitamin D from a passive to an active form. This newly activated vitamin D

sliced a pre-existing protein in two. One of the resulting chunks of protein is

the tubercle bacillus killer cathelicidin.

 

Serum produced by Afro-Americans produced 63% less cathelicidin than serum

donated by whites. Adding a vitamin D precursor to the African-American serum

increased cathelicidin production. Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health

Barry Bloom found these results exciting because they suggested that a dietary

supplement costing only pennies a day (vitamin D) might turn out to be able to

reduce the frequency and severity of a deadly disease (tuberculosis).

 

Vitamin D mediates a key human bacterial response against tuberculosis. This

could explain why African-Americans are more vulnerable to tuberculosis as they

have lower levels of vitamin D than Caucasians. This series of molecular events

provides an explanation of why dark-pigmented patients are vulnerable to a more

virulent form of tuberculosis.

 

The ready availability of inexpensive vitamin D and the herbal substance

umckaloabo provide two new encouraging approaches to the therapy of

tuberculosis.

 

Footnotes:

 

1, Plotnikoff, GA and Quigley BA Prevelence of Severe Hypovitaminosis D in

patients with Persistent, non specific Musculoskeletal Pain Mayo clinic proc.

2003;78: 1463-1470

2, Newsome SWB Stevens' cure:a secret remedy J R. Soc. Med 2002, 95:463-7

3, Harris, Ruth Personal communication supplied th information about the

improvement of extrapulmonary tuberculosis and how to obtain umckaloabo in the

USA and Germany.

4, Phytophaemaka VII Oct 2001

5, Vitamin D Council 9100 San Gregorio Road, Atascadero, Ca. 93422

6, Lancet Vol 355 No. 9204 19 Feb. 2000

7, Acta Med Indos. Jan-Mar 2006;36(1):3-5

8, Liu p.T. et al Toll-like receptor triggering of a vitamin D-mediated human

antimicrobial response Science February 23, 2006

 

© 2008 Dr. James Howenstine -

 

 

 

 

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