West Africa has a rich heritage of using natural remedies to treat the challenging afflictions common to the area.

It turns out this splendid diversity may contain the answer to the ebola pandemic.

Scientists may have found a cure for the deadly Ebola virus in a plant extract used in traditional African medicine, writes Clare Sansom.

The rare Ebola fever is one of the most dangerous of viral infections for which there is still no effective treatment. But results presented at the 16th International Botanic Congress in St Louis, Missouri, suggest that a plant widely used in traditional African medicine may contain a compound that is effective against the Ebola virus.(2012)

Maurice Iwu, executive director of the Bio-resources Development and Conservation Programme, based in Maryland, explained that an extract derived from the seeds of Garcinia kola could inhibit this virus in cell culture at non-toxic concentrations.

Garcinia kola is a medium-sized tree that is common in central Africa. Its seeds are used as medicine throughout the region, and extracts are marketed as dietary supplements in the United States. The use of such supplements is regulated by the US Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act, which states that they should be “generally recognised as safe”. 

John Huggins, of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infective Diseases, who conducted the in vitro tests, emphasized the preliminary nature of the work so far. “This compound has passed the first stage with flying colors, but there is still a long way to go. It may be impossible to develop it into an effective drug.”
The main barrier to the further development of this compound may be financial. Pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest resources in the development of drugs against extremely rare tropical diseases.

Alongside the development of the pure compound, Iwu and his colleagues are testing a purified seed extract, known as Kolavirion, that contains the active biflavonoid and some other potentially anti-infective compounds. This phytomedicine should be much cheaper to develop and produce than a pure drug.

Aspirin and quinine, two of the most widely used of all drugs, are derived from plants that were used as folk remedies. Paclitaxel (taxol) is one of the best known of modern drugs derived from natural products. This drug, extracted from the Pacific yew, has been licensed for treatment of breast, ovarian and lung cancers and Kaposi’s sarcoma. So there are precedents for the plan to harness African biodiversity against one of the most dangerous of African diseases the ebola virus.