Studies Have Found That the Anti-inflammatory Effects of Traditional Samoan Plants Are Comparable to Ibuprofen

Researchers have identified the anti-inflammatory mechanism of a plant that has been used in traditional Samoan medicine for centuries,?New Atlas reports. The new study found that the plant, called Matalafi, is just as effective at reducing inflammation as ibuprofen.

Psychotria Insularum is a small rainforest shrub native to the South Pacific. Leaves of the plant have been used as medicine by Samoan indigenous communities for generations.

Matalafi is traditionally used in medicine to target inflammation ranging from fever to swelling and skin infections. Traditionally, the leaves of the plant are pounded into a paste, technically known as a homogenate.

Seeseei Molimau-Samasoni, Samoa's native scientist, explains: "Matalafi is used in Two ways in Samoa - to treat diseases attributed to ghosts, and to treat various forms of inflammation. I started my PhD at Te Herenga Waka in 2013 and worked with Samoan traditional healers to harvest matalafi and bring it to Aotearoa to understand how and why it works."

Scientists have pieced together nearly a decade of research to reveal exactly how Matalafi exerts its anti-inflammatory effects. The results suggest that Matalafi is an iron chelator. This means matalafi contains compounds that bind to iron and basically help the body get rid of excess iron.

Testing Matalafi on mammalian cells, the study found that the iron-chelating agent's activity "reduced pro-inflammatory and enhanced anti-inflammatory cytokine responses in immune cells." The anti-inflammatory activity detected in the study was found to be comparable to ibuprofen, a common over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drug.

Matalafi's iron chelator activity also suggests that it has some other potential medical uses in addition to its general anti-inflammatory properties. Abnormal iron concentrations in the brain, for example, have recently been hypothesized to play a role in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Andrew Munkacsi, another researcher on the new study, said a chemical genome analysis showed that compounds in plants interact with a gene linked to obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

"Our findings also highlight the sensitivity of RIM101 deletions to p. insularum homogenates." Munkacsi said. "This gene is a major regulator of lipid toxicity (cell death due to lipid toxicity), which is the basis of obesity."

The study highlighted two major bioactive compounds in Matalafi: rutin and pyrotechnin. Both compounds have previously been found to have anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects. However, the researchers do call for further chemical investigation of the Psychotria insularum plant, as it is possible that there are undiscovered compounds that could help improve matalafi's overall medicinal effects.

"These are traditional medicines that our people have been using for hundreds of years," Molimau-Samasoni recently told The New Zealand publication Stuff. "We are now finding that science supports the presence of real activity in some of our medicines. I do want to stress the need for scientific investigation of traditional medicines before they are widely used...... There are still more steps to be done."

The new study was published in the journal of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).