May 24, 2002 (Health Media Ltd) - For more than 2000 years, traditional Chinese medicine has used ginseng root to treat a variety of ailments. Now a team at the University of Chicago's Tang Center for Herbal Medicine Research suggests that ginseng's much-neglected berry could also have important medical uses, In a study, published in the journal Diabetes, researchers injected the extract, made from the pulp of the berry, once a day into mice with a gene defect that causes weight gain and type 2 diabetes. The extract had no detectable effect on healthy mice, the researchers report, in the mice bred to develop diabetes, the extract completely normalised blood glucose levels, improved sensitivity to insulin, reduced cholesterol levels and decreased weight by reducing appetite and increasing activity levels. Professor Chun-Su Yuan says, "Ginseng berry has a distinctive chemical profile and has not previously been used for therapy. We were stunned by how different the berry is from the root and by how effective it is in correcting the multiple metabolic abnormalities associated with diabetes." Since the berry contains agents that are effective against both obesity and diabetes, the ginseng fruit has enormous promise as a source of new drugs, Prof Yuan added. In another part of the study, the team focused on ginsenoside Re, a substance concentrated in ginseng berries but quite scarce in the root. These tests showed ginsenoside Re alone had all of the anti-diabetic but none of the obesity-fighting activities of the extract. "This novel compound could serve as the basis for a whole new class of anti-diabetic medications," says Prof Yuan. The researchers' next step is to isolate other substances in the extract and find out whether they also affect glucose regulation or weight gain, learn how they work and determine the safe and effective dose, says Prof Yaun.

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