Background: Illicium verum is widely cultivated in southern China especially in Guangxi province. Its fruits has been traditionally used in Chinese medicine. In recent years, it has been the industrial source of shikimic acid. Usually the residues after extracting shikimic acid are treated as waste. Thus, the aim of this study was to optimize the extraction conditions of cellulase-ultrasonic as...

Head lice infestation caused by Pediculus humanus capitis De Geer. (Phthiraptera) is one of the most important public health problem in children worldwide. Currently, head lice resistance to chemical pediculicide are increasing, thus new alternative pediculicides from herb or plant are needed for head lice treatment. The aim of this study were to evaluate toxicity of five herbal extracts from A...

UNLABELLED The German Randomized Acupuncture Trial for chronic shoulder pain (GRASP) comprised 424 outpatients with chronic shoulder pain (CSP) > or =6 weeks and an average pain score of VAS > or =50 mm, who were randomly assigned to receive Chinese acupuncture (verum), sham acupuncture (sham) or conventional conservative orthopaedic treatment (COT). The patients were blinded to the type of acu...

BACKGROUND Homeopathic pathogenetic trials (provings) are fundamental to homeopathy. Since most of the data from available provings have not been statistically evaluated, it is unclear how specific reported symptoms are and how they differ from those reported by people taking placebo. METHOD We combine and analyse data from two different homeopathic pathogenic trials--including 10 and 11 prov...

Background. Little is known which factors influence the blinding in acupuncture studies. Aim. To investigate if blinding varied between patients with different characteristics receiving verum or sham acupuncture. Methods. We randomised cancer patients to verum (n = 109) or sham acupuncture (n = 106) with a nonpenetrating telescopic sham needle for nausea. Level of blinding was compared between ...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to assess the effectiveness and safety of percutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (PENS) in migraine treatment. METHODS Sixty-two patients with at least 2 migration attacks each month were recruited and randomly divided into a verum PENS group and a sham PENS group in a ratio of 1:1. All patients received verum or sham PENS 30 minutes daily, 5 times weekly for 12...

Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most common entrapment neuropathy, affecting the median nerve at the wrist. Acupuncture is a minimally-invasive and conservative therapeutic option, and while rooted in a complex practice ritual, acupuncture overlaps significantly with many conventional peripherally-focused neuromodulatory therapies. However, the neurophysiological mechanisms by which acupuncture i...

German and French differ in a number of aspects. Regarding the prosody-pragmatics interface, German is said to have a direct focus-to-accent mapping, which is largely absent in French--owing to strong structural constraints. We used a semi-spontaneous dialogue setting to investigate the intonational marking of Verum Focus, a focus on the polarity of an utterance in the two languages (e.g. the c...

Objective: The present study was designed to investigate the antihyperlipidemic and anti-atherosclerotic activity of 70% methanolic crude extract of Cinnamomum verum bark in high cholesterol-fed diet rabbits. Methods: C. verum extract was administered at a dose level of 200 mg/kg and 300 mg/kg (p. o) daily for 120 d to cholesterol-fed rabbits. Lipid profile in serum and histological changes in ...

BACKGROUND Essential oils (EOs) are complex mixtures of secondary metabolites from various plants. It has been shown that several EOs, or their constituents, have inhibitory activity against trypanosomatid protozoa. Thus, we analyzed the biological activity of different EOs on Trypanosoma cruzi, as well as their cytotoxicity on Vero cells. METHODS The following EOs were evaluated on T. cruzi ...