By
Linda Carroll, Medical Tribune News Service
PHILADELPHIA
-- It's not uncommon for obstetricians to be obsessed with the
birds and the bees.
But for an Egyptian obstetrician/gynecologist, it's the bee's
sting that's the most interesting.
Bee
venom is good medicine for a variety of gynecological ills, from
excruciating menstrual pain to infertility, said Dr. Ali Farid
Ali, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Ain Shans University
in Cairo.
Ali
described his work with bee venom in two studies presented here
this week at the annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists.
In one study, Ali and his colleagues used bee venom to treat a
painful condition known as adenomyosis. Women with this condition
experience pain and heavy bleeding at the end of their menstrual
cycles, because their uteruses are thickened with benign tumors.
Other researchers have shown that bee venom can act both as an
anti-inflammatory agent and a pain killer, and also appears to
modify immune-system function, Ali said. Because scientists believe
that adenomyosis is caused by an overactive immune system, Ali
suspected that injections of bee venom directly into the uterus
might improve symptoms.
In
a study of eight women suffering from adenomyosis, five were found
to have a 75-percent reduction in the size of the uterus after
treatment with bee venom, according to Ali. Four of the five reported
a complete resolution of their symptoms, he said.
In a second study, Ali and his colleagues used a substance extracted
from bee venom to help infertile women produce more eggs.
Normally, doctors stimulate a woman's ovaries to produce multiple
eggs by giving them injections of a hormone called human menopausal
gonadotropin. The hormone is derived from the urine of postmenopausal
women and is very expensive to collect in the quantities needed
to stimulate the ovaries.
A
similar gonadotropin is found in bee venom, according to the Egyptian
researcher, ``but it's much cheaper to produce.''
To
compare the effects of the two gonadotropins, Ali and his colleagues
used them to treat 40 infertile women: half received medication
derived from bee venom and half received hormones from post-menopausal
women. The dosages given to the women in the study were the same,
regardless of which gonadotrophin was used.
Almost 29 percent of the women who received bee venom gonadotropin
became pregnant, compared with 20 percent of the women who received
the standard ovary stimulator, according to Ali.
A
dangerous side effect, known as ovarian hyperstimulation, was
also less common among women treated with bee venom gonadotropin,
Ali said.
What
gave Ali the idea to use bee venom?
As
it turns out, bees are Ali's hobby.
``I am the editor of many books on bees,'' he said. ``I have been
working on bee venom for 15 years.''
One
researcher called Ali's use of bee venom, ``interesting and novel.''
``But
I might worry about allergies to the bee venom,'' said Dr. Wendy
Whitcomb, a researcher at St. Louis University in St. Louis. Whitcomb
also noted that the new studies were very small.
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