• Phytomedicine · Nov 2016

    Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study

    A single-dose, randomized, cross-over, two-way, open-label study for comparing the absorption of boswellic acids and its lecithin formulation.

    • Antonella Riva, Paolo Morazzoni, Christian Artaria, Pietro Allegrini, Jürgen Meins, Daniele Savio, Giovanni Appendino, Manfred Schubert-Zsilavecz, and Mona Abdel-Tawab.
    • Indena S.p.A., Viale Ortles 12, Milano, Italy.
    • Phytomedicine. 2016 Nov 15; 23 (12): 1375-1382.

    BackgroundThe oral administration of the gum resin extracts of Indian frankincense (Boswellia serrata Roxb. ex Colebr) results in very low plasma concentrations of boswellic acids (BAs), being far below the pharmacologically active concentrations required in vitro for anti-inflammatory activity. For that reason the use of Indian frankincense in clinical practice and pharmaceutical development has substantially lagged behind. Recently the application of new formulation technologies resulted in a formulation of frankincense extract with lecithin, which revealed improved absorption and tissue penetration of BAs in a rodent study, leading for the first time to plasma concentrations of BAs in the range of their anti-inflammatory activity.PurposeIn order to verify these encouraging results in humans, the absorption of a standardized Boswellia serrata extract (BE) and its lecithin formulation (CSP) was comparatively investigated in healthy volunteers.Study DesignAccording to a randomized cross-over design with two treatments, two sequences and two periods, 12 volunteers alternatively received the lecithin-formulated Boswellia extract (CSP) or the non-formulated Boswellia extract (BE) at a dosage of 2×250mg capsules.MethodsThe plasma concentrations of the six major BAs (KBA, AKBA, βBA, αBA, AβBA, AαBA) were determined using LC/MS.ResultsWith the exception of KBA, a significantly higher (both in terms of weight-to-weight and molar comparison) and quicker absorption of BAs from the lecithin formulation was observed, leading to Cmax in the range required for the interaction with their molecular targets.ConclusionThese findings pave the way to further studies evaluating the clinical potential of BAs, and verify the beneficial effect of lecithin formulation to improve the absorption of poorly soluble phytochemicals.Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier GmbH.. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…