Effects of Gum Resin of Boswellia serrata in Patients with Chronic Colitis

Abstract

Patients studied here suffered from chronic colitis characterized by vague lower abdominal pain, bleeding per rectum with diarrhoea and palpable tender descending and sigmoid colon. The inflammatory process in colitis is associated with increased formation of leukotrienes causing chemotaxis, chemokinesis, synthesis of superoxide radicals and release of lysosomal enzymes by phagocytes. The key enzyme for leukotriene biosynthesis is 5-lipoxygenase. Boswellic acids were found to be non-redox, non-competitive specific inhibitors of the enzyme 5-lipoxygenase. We studied the gum resin of Boswellia serrata for the treatment of this disease. Thirty patients, 17 males and 13 females in the age range of 18 to 48 years with chronic colitis were included in this study. Twenty patients were given a preparation of the gum resin of Boswellia serrata (900 mg daily divided in three doses for 6 weeks) and ten patients were given sulfasalazine (3 gm daily divided in three doses for 6 weeks) and served as controls. Out of 20 patients treated with Boswellia gum resin 18 patients showed an improvement in one or more of the parameters: including stool properties, histopathology as well as scanning electron microscopy, besides haemoglobin, serum iron, calcium, phosphorus, proteins, total leukocytes and eosinophils. In the control group 6 out of 10 patients showed similar results with the same parameters. Out of 20 patients treated with Boswellia gum resin 14 went into remission while in case of sulfasalazine remission rate was 4 out of 10. In conclusion, this study shows that a gum resin preparation from Boswellia serrata could be effective in the treatment of chronic colitis with minimal side effects.

Acetyl-Boswellic Acids Inhibit Lipopolysaccharide-Mediated TNF-α Induction in Monocytes by Direct Interaction with IκB Kinases

“…Oral administration of a single dose of 1200 -1600 mg of ABAcontaining extract preparations yielded effective plasma concentrations of 2-32 M of various acetylated and nonacetylated boswellic acids (11,57,58), yet a high bioavailability of boswellic acids strongly depends on concomitant food intake (58). Treatment of glioblastoma patients with an extract from the gum resin of B. serrata, i.e., Indian frankincense, over 10 days led to a plasma levels of acetylated and nonacetylated forms of ␣-boswellic acid of 4 M (18).…”

Boswellic acid induces epigenetic alterations by modulating DNA methylation in colorectal cancer cells

“…by modulating DNA methylation in colorectal cancer cells Hon-Chiu E. Leung, 3 C. Richard Boland 1 and Ajay Goel DNA hypermethylation of CpG islands located within the promoter regions of tumor suppressor genes is a common epigenetic alteration involved in most human cancers. Unlike genomic epigenetic alterations, including aberrant methylation genes is potentially reversible with therapeutic agents.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5] Acetyl-11-keto-β-boswellic acid (AKBA), one of the major active boswellic acids present in boswellia extracts, is a pentacyclic terpenoid, which has been shown to have antitumor effects in different types of tumor cells including colon, 6,7 prostate, 8,9 leukocytes, 10 liver 11 and brain. 12 Several earlier studies have reported inhibitory effects of AKBA on the nuclear factor kappa B (NFκB), 13 and the signal transducer and activator of transcription-3 (STAT-3)-related pathways, 14 which potentiate apoptosis and inhibit angiogenesis in neoplastic cells.…”

Development and optimization of boswellic acid-loaded proniosomal gel

“…Boswellia serrata contains four important BAs: a-boswellic acid, b-boswellic acid, 11-ketob-boswellic acid (KBA), and 3-acetyl-11-keto-b-boswellic acid (AKBA) (Singh et al, 1996). The gum resin is established to possess potent anti-inflammatory activity in traditional ayurvedic medicines (Ammon, 2006) and also used in other diseases like, joint pain (Sharma et al, 1989;Gupta et al, 1994;Kimmatkar et al, 2003), tumor (Huang et al, 2000), colitis (Gupta et al, 2001), hyperlipidemia (Pandey et al, 2005), crohn's illness (Gerhardt et al, 2001), etc.…”