The Ranking of Tongkat Ali Plants to Boost Testosterone Hormone Evaluated in both In vitro and In vivo Experiments

Abstract

However, most research on Tongkat Ali has focused on one type of plant, Eurycoma longifolia, commonly called Tongkat Ali Putih in Malaysia. It is worth noting that two other types of Tongkat Ali have also been used traditionally for their aphrodisiac properties. According to the indigenous people, these two types of Tongkat Ali known are Polyalthia bullata (Tongkat Ali Hitam) and Stema tuberosa (Tongkat Ali Merah), both of which have been harvested and used for their aphrodisiac functions. 5,6 Although all three plants are commonly known as Tongkat Ali, they belong to different genera and have roots with distinctive natural colors. Interestingly, their common names in Malay (the national language of Malaysia) are descriptive of the color of their roots: Tongkat Ali Putih (Putih meaning white), Tongkat Ali Hitam (Hitam referring to black), and Tongkat Ali Merah (Merah meaning red), respectively for E. longifolia, P. bullata and S. tuberosa. 7 In Indonesia, Tongkat Ali is referred to as Pasak Bumi. E. longifolia is an abundant and widely available species, making it the preferred choice in research compared to P. bullata and S. tuberosa. This preference is evident in the literature on the less-studied P. bullata and S. tuberosa as aphrodisiacs. In P. bullata, the presence of protein has been reported, with the detection of a 4.3 kDa peptide using SELDI MS. 8 However, for S. tuberosa, there is still no scientific research reporting bioactive protein. Previously, in E. longifolia, a protein, more specifically a glycosylated protein, was extracted and demonstrated to increase testosterone in TM-3 ATCC® CRL-1714TM treated cells. 9 Thus, this study aims to provide evidence of the protein presence in Tongkat Ali plants and, additionally, to assess the effectiveness of crude extracts from the three Tongkat Ali plants in boosting testosterone levels through both in vitro and in vivo treatments.