The plant will also help in the fight against AIDS
Alex Doron
At the same time as the warning against the resurgence of the Sars epidemic this winter, scientists in Germany announced an interesting discovery: the main chemical component in the licorice plant (Hebrew: licorice) proved to be effective in the fight against the virus that causes the deadly epidemic.
Licorice is a root, which in homeopathic medicine is credited with success in treating infections in the respiratory tract, mouth, digestive system and urinary system. In a report to the medical weekly Lanzet, researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of Frankfurt reported their discovery, according to which the chemical substance they extracted from licorice - Glycyrrhizin - acted better on the Sars virus than any other chemical substance.
Homeopathic doctors provide concentrates of this substance to treat quite a few viral diseases. Among other things, an experimental drug against the AIDS virus was also produced from it. The researchers said that in Germany, glycyrrhizin was compared against four other preparations for the treatment of AIDS, and according to them, "they were hit on the thigh". The chemical worked well to prevent the virus from growing.
For hundreds of years, licorice has been in the "medicine basket" of traditional Chinese medicine. In the past, they tried to use the chemical component extracted from it also to treat hepatitis viruses of type B and C. There is still no explanation of how the substance works on the Sars virus. It may cause a virus-infected cell to produce nitric oxide that blocks the molecular pathway through which the virus replicates.
