The best and easiest place to start is by starting to document everything you can about this plant. Every preliminary investigation paper I've read starts by citing a history of use, case studies, anecdotal evidence, etc. supporting the investigation of the plant as a medicine.
-- You'll almost certainly find out interesting things. Perhaps different practitioners prepare or use the substance differently, or use it for different ailments.
Sounds like you already have your first case study, so just document that well and then get the who, what, why, where, when, and how of this plant's overall history of use.
A good place to start is to look at other similar studies. Check out Mullein leaf (Verbascum thapsus, Great mullein, Common mullein). There's a long history of use for inflammatory, lung conditions, hemorrhoids, etc.. They investigated the anti-inflammatory properties by subcutaneously injecting mice with an irritant and mullein extract then measured the injection site inflammation against the controls. They found it to be quite effective.
You may find in your background research some property of the plant that is easier to test than immunological effects.
A clinical study is probably beyond your reach at the moment, and is probably overkill at this point. But if people are using this remedy on a regular basis around you there's probably some research you can start right away. Taking lancet sized blood samples from people before and after treatment and then doing a white blood cell count might show something interesting.
Working with blood is something to be very careful with though. I'd suggest having the subjects lance themselves, put a drop on a slide, then apply the cover slip, and place it in a storage box for you. This way you can wait for any extra blood on the slides to dry and only work with the samples in your lab under safe conditions. Touching blood in the field is too dangerous, as can be seen by the large number of accidental sticks suffered by nurses each year.
With some good background info and a proposal, I bet you can find a local hospital lab that would help you with the counts, maybe even run all of them for you. I'm not sure what format the automated count machines take though.
On Friday, April 1, 2016 at 1:22:54 AM UTC-7, Cristian Segovia wrote:
On Friday, April 1, 2016 at 1:22:54 AM UTC-7, Cristian Segovia wrote:
Hi everyone, i kind of stumbled onto the diy bio movement and it seems really interesting. I don't really know where to start so some recommended reading or tips would be really appreciated.
I got interested in this because there is a plant in my country that is supposed to have a positive effect on the immune system of someone who has a weakened immune system, for what ever reason. I saw it work on my mother when she had dengue fever a few months ago. Long story short, after the results from a blood analysis came back, it showed that her immune system wasn't doing too well, she came back home grounded the leaves and put them in water and drank it through a metal straw that we call "bombilla" that has a metal filter at the end. After which her immune system rebounded and got better, I've heard of other people doing this same thing and getting similar results.
So my question is, where can i start? i want to analyse this plant for it's medicinal properties and maybe turn it into some type of medicine. If what i've observed and heard is possible then many people could be benefited with this kind of medicine. And it's not the only one, many plants and the like are said to have medicinal properties around here, i've used some of them and they've been pretty effective. I would like to start testing and analysing them.
Btw im a Comp sci student, if i can make a good case i might be able to persuade my principal into getting the people in biotech and biology involved(my campus is about 200km from the main university campus where the dept. of science is located, which is why i haven't been able to go to them with this idea)
Thanks for taking the time to respond
-Cristian from Paraguay
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diybio@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en
Learn more at www.diybio.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to diybio@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/diybio.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/f35ddd1d-8a9b-4920-9acd-3061f07f799a%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
0 comments:
Post a Comment