Estrogen's a Natural in Herbal Remedies

Estrogen's a Natural in Herbal Remedies Patricia Eagon, an associate professor of medicine at Pennsylvania's University of Pittsburgh, decided to consult an herbalist after she began to suspect that Premarin, the prescription estrogen she was taking for menopausal symptoms, was causing a rash on her leg. The herbalist, whom she had consulted before on other health matters, gave her a mixture of several herbs to take instead of Premarin. The concoction both relieved Eagon's hot flashes and piqued her curiosity about how the herbal ingredients worked. Eagon decided to launch her own experiment to find out. She conducted an estrogen-binding assay on 15 herbs commonly used in treating menopause, including 3 from the remedy she had taken herself. Herbs that showed estrogenic activity in the screening were then fed to rats that had undergone ovariectomy. To test the herbs' estrogenicity, Eagon weighed the rats' uteri at the end of the study and measured changes in the concentration of luteinizing hormone in their blood (enlarged uterus and decreased luteinizing hormone concentration are both indicators of estrogenic activity). The tests indicated an estrogenic effect in four of the herbschaste tree berry (Vitex agnus-castus), dong quai (Angelica sinensis), American ginseng (Panax quinquefolium), and black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa). Eagon reported her findings on 11 April 1999 at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research and is currently preparing the results for publication. , i : A~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~