传统的汤羹具有治疗疟疾的功效

传统的汤羹具有治疗疟疾的功效

What's the universal remedy for the common cold? Chicken soup, of course. But there might be even more truth to this old adage than personal experience might have you believe.

治疗普通感冒的万能药是什么?当然是鸡汤了。但这句古老的格言可能比你的个人经历更有道理。

Soups have long been heralded for their healing properties. (Photo: Claus Ableiter [CC BY-SA 3.0]/Wiki Commons)

New research recently published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood looked at traditional soup broths from around the world to see if any others might have sickness-fighting properties, and in the process a new treatment for one of the world's most devastating diseases, malaria, might have been inadvertently discovered, reports Medical News Today.

最近在《儿童疾病档案》杂志上发表的一项新的研究从世界各地看了传统的汤溴，以了解是否有其他人可能患有疾病抵抗性质，据“今日医学新闻”报道，在这个过程中，一种治疗世界上最具破坏性的疾病之一疟疾的新疗法可能是不经意间被发现的。

The team, led by professor Jake Baum from the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, asked pupils from various ethnic backgrounds in a primary school in London to bring them samples of homemade traditional soups. In total, 60 soups with attested fever-reducing properties were brought in for analysis. The recipes were derived from regions as far-ranging as Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

这个由英国伦敦帝国理工学院的杰克·鲍姆教授领导的研究小组，让伦敦一所小学里来自不同种族背景的学生给他们带一些自制的传统汤的样品。总共有60种汤被证实有退烧的功效。这些配方来自欧洲、北非和中东等地区。

Baum was especially interested in testing these soups against infection with malaria because the newest antimalarial drug, called artemisinin, was originally derived from a traditional Chinese herb, qinghao. Soups with qinghao have been used for more than 2,000 years in China to treat malaria-related fevers. So, the professor was hoping that perhaps there might be other important soup ingredients from around the world that science has overlooked in its search for remedies to this deadly disease.

鲍姆特别感兴趣的是对这些汤进行抗疟疾感染的测试，因为最新的抗疟药青蒿素最初是由一种传统中药青蒿制成的。2000多年来，中国一直使用清汤来治疗疟疾相关的发烧。因此，这位教授希望，也许在寻找这种致命疾病的治疗方法的过程中，世界各地可能还有其他重要的汤食材被科学忽略了。

Filtered extracts from the soups were incubated with different cultures of malaria-causing parasites to see if the soups would stop their growth. After just 72 hours, Baum and colleagues found with amazement that five of the 60 soups had stopped the in vitro growth of P. falciparum, the world's deadliest malarial parasite, by more than 50%. A couple of these soups showed results comparable to dihydroartemisinin, a leading antimalarial drug already on the market.

从汤中过滤出来的提取物与不同的疟原虫培养菌一起培养，看看汤是否会阻止它们的生长。72小时后，鲍姆和同事惊奇地发现，60种汤中的5种已经使世界上最致命的疟原虫——恶性疟原虫的体外生长停止了50%以上。其中一些汤剂的效果可与双氢青蒿素相媲美，双氢青蒿素是目前市场上领先的抗疟药。

Four other broths were found to show 50% transmission blocking activity, preventing male parasite sexual stage development.

另外四种寄生虫显示出50%的传播阻断活性，阻止了雄性寄生虫的性发育阶段。

These results were far beyond what was expected. These are just soups from a few handful of households around London; imagine if researchers had pooled from an even more extensive sample size worldwide.

这些结果远远超出了预期。这些只是伦敦附近几个家庭的汤;想象一下，如果研究人员从世界范围内更广泛的样本中汇集起来。

The team was quick to note that they don't know exactly what the key malaria-fighting ingredients were within these soups; they were all complex soups with many ingredients. Isolating the ingredients one-by-one will be the next step in their study. It was mentioned, however, that a variety of broth bases were used among the most effective soups, ranging from vegetable based, to beef or chicken based. (Of course some of them were chicken based, right?)

研究小组很快指出，他们不知道这些汤里到底有什么关键的抗疟疾成分;它们都是有很多配料的复杂汤。下一步的研究将是把这些成分一一分离出来。然而，有人提到，在最有效的汤中使用了多种肉汤，从蔬菜汤到牛肉汤或鸡肉汤。(当然有些是鸡肉做的，对吧?)

"At a time when there is a resurgent voice against evidence-based medicine, such exercises have great importance for educating the next generation about how new drugs are discovered, how they might work, and how untapped resources still exist in the fight against global diseases of significance," the authors concluded.

“在对循证医学有再紧急的声音的时候，这样的锻炼对于教育下一代关于新药物是如何被发现的，它们是如何起作用的，以及在抗击具有重要意义的全球疾病的斗争中，尚未开发的资源如何存在的问题是非常重要的。”作者得出结论。

While we await further results from follow-up studies, and as we approach that annual flu season, don't scoff at your family's traditional remedies. There might be more medical magic hidden within Grandma's chicken soup than you ever thought possible.

当我们等待后续研究的进一步结果，当我们接近每年的流感季节，不要嘲笑你的家人的传统疗法。奶奶的鸡汤里可能隐藏着比你想象中更多的医学魔力。