On Gelsemium and Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in Anxiety and Experimental Neurology

Abstract

A recent discussion expanded the debate about the experimental research on Gelsemium in anxiety. Herbal medicine is widely used in anxiety and mood disorders, often with contradictory evidence, although some authors are yet prompted to promote their full introduction in pharmacology as a promising therapy. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in anxiety is particularly appreciated by individual healthcare, but deserves further investigation, as many critical issues have been recently raised. Comments about the ability of negligible doses of Gelsemium hydroalcoholic extracts to affect gene expression were recently reported.

Experimental neuropharmacology of Gelsemium sempervirens : Recent advances and debated issues

“…The most recent commentary on Gelsemium studies [22] repeats several previous “critical issues” and “comments” concerning purported “biases”, summarized in a full table. This further comment maintained that herbal medicine is widely used in anxiety and mood disorders, often with contradictory evidence, and this is quite obvious.…”

“…5th and 9th centesimal dilution). These studies were never disproved experimentally, but sparked a debate and were the object of comments or critical commentaries concerning the action mechanisms of Gelsemium and the methods of its investigation [16] , [17] , [18] , [19] , [20] , [21] , [22] . In the meantime, the effect of Gelsemium or its alkaloids in neurological and behavioral models were reported by several independent laboratories [1] , [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] , [27] , [28] .…”

Bias and misleading concepts in an Arnica research study. Comments to improve experimental Homeopathy

“…The role of ethanol should be better highlighted even though it is difficult to believe that the dilutions may work due to its existence. Ethanol was used in several experimental papers using homeopathic dilutions [6] , [7] , [8] , raising comments elsewhere [9] , [10] , [11] . Verma et al.…”

“…reported recently that ethanol is able to induce the release of nanosized membrane extracellular vesicles able to induce macrophage activation [12] . There is no doubt that ethanol has a chemical activity in those systems where the molar mass of the active principle is absolutely negligible [10] , [13] , [14] . However, the most frequent criticism to this comment is that ethanol is present both in controls and in herbal dilutions (cases) and hence, this solvent could not be considered a statistical confounding [15] .…”

“…Ethanol has a specific activity on gene expression and on differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and may cause bias in the estimation of p values, particularly if performed with an approach, such as Friedman test, which has the very low power of the sign test [14] , [18] . In this case, effects can be related to ethanol as the main confounder of the dilutions [1] , [10] , [15] .…”