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Alternative Medicine for Exercise-Induced Muscle Pain

There are many important medications in use today for arthritis, cancer, infectious diseases, and other clinical disorders that were originally discovered from plant sources (1, 2). Medicines like aspirin, quinine, penicillin, vincristine, and taxol are examples. Aspirin originally came from the bark of the willow tree, but another pine tree bark extract by the name of pycnogenol, may prove to be even more effective than aspirin for controlling pathological blood clotting. Tamoxifen, a drug that is useful in the treatment of breast cancer, came from the Pacific Yew tree. Other such medically useful tree bark extracts include an antibiotic/immunostimulant from Pau D’Arco bark, a treatment for prostatism from an African tree called Pygeum africanum, a potential diabetic drug from the root of the cinnamon tree, and an anxiolytic drug from Yohimbe tree bark. In many cases, native people had long been aware of medicinal properties associated with these natural products. In 2001, the World Health Organization became involved in the study of alternative medicines by conducting a survey of its 191 member countries regarding the availability and regulation of herbal medicines (2). It is with that background that the lead article in this issue of the Journal of Musculoskeletal Pain [JMP] is introduced. Coming from Aalborg and Copenhagen, Denmark (3) is a well-designed study of the analgesic effects of a sheanut oil extract [BSP-201] on exercise induced muscle tenderness. A component of this natural product was earlier found to be anti-inflammatory, in that it reduced the dosedependent production of IL-6 and TNF-α in a rat peritonitis model (4). It will be interesting to see whether the sub-Saharan butter prepared from the nut of the West African Mangifolia shea tree [Butyrospermum parkii] shows up on the restricted drug list of world athletic competitions. It would also be tempting to wonder if this agent might be helpful for the muscle pain of the myofascial pain syndrome [MPS] or what is often perceived as muscle pain among patients with the fibromyalgia syndrome [FMS]. In the case of MPS, there is a report of inflammatory mediators at the location of the trigger point (5), but FMS has been shown to benefit from therapeutic administration of IL-6, perhaps because of its ability to function as a modulator of the hypothalamic stress axis (6). The second research paper comes from Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil (7). Two dentists [one in postgraduate training in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA] studied 290 subjects with chronic headache to ascertain the headache diagnosis and to determine the role of MPS in the pathogenesis of the head pain. Their findings