Publications by authors named "Souard Florence"

Article Synopsis
  • Many individuals believe herbal products are safer than conventional medicine, but they can interact with treatments and cause harmful effects, which may result in serious consequences.
  • Despite the risks, there are limited guidelines available for assessing these interactions between herbs and medications.
  • The authors introduce a new scoring method called BABINE, which involves expert discussion to create a scale that simplifies and evaluates the risk of herb-drug interactions effectively.
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Coffee plants contain well-known xanthines as caffeine. Three Coffea species grown in a controlled greenhouse environment were the focus of this research. Coffea arabica and C.

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Article Synopsis
  • A survey of 349 cancer patients in Belgium explored their attitudes and behaviors toward natural health products (NHPs) as complementary therapies, revealing that 83.1% believe NHPs can enhance conventional medicine but only 27.7% find them more effective.
  • Most patients (over 50%) reported using five or more NHPs, with vitamins being the most common supplement taken daily, and 72.7% changed their consumption habits after diagnosis.
  • The primary reasons for using NHPs included boosting the immune system (79.7%) and mitigating side effects from conventional treatments, emphasizing the necessity for education on potential drug interactions between NHPs and standard medications.
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The management of skin wound healing problems is a public health issue in which traditional herbal medicines could play a determining role. Kampo medicine, with three traditionally used ointments, provides interesting solutions for these dermatological issues. These ointments named , , and all have in common a lipophilic base of sesame oil and beeswax from which herbal crude drugs are extracted according to several possible manufacturing protocols.

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Cancer patients could combine herbal treatments with their chemotherapy. We consulted VigiBase, a WHO database of individual case safety reports (ICSRs) which archives reports of suspected Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) when herbal products are used in conjunction with anti-cancer treatment. We focused on the possible interactions between antineoplastic (L01 ATC class) or hormone antagonists (L02B ATC class) with 10 commonly used herbs (pineapple, green tea, cannabis, black cohosh, turmeric, echinacea, St John's wort, milk thistle and ginger) to compare ADRs described in ICSRs with the literature.

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Herbal food supplements are commonly used and can be an important part of patient self-care. Like all other bio-active and therapeutic products, they have a benefit/risk balance. These products are not without adverse effects and potentially interact with other therapies.

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While coffee beans have been studied for many years, researchers are showing a growing interest in coffee leaves and by-products, but little information is currently available on coffee species other than and . The aim of this work was to perform a targeted and untargeted metabolomics study on , and . The application of the recent high-resolution mass spectrometry-based metabolomics tools allowed us to gain a clear overview of the main differences among the coffee species.

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Unlike those of coffee beans, the healthy properties of coffee leaves have been overlooked for a long time, even if they are consumed as a beverage by local communities of several African countries. Due to the presence of xanthines, diterpenes, xanthones, and several other polyphenol derivatives as main secondary metabolites, coffee leaves might be useful to prevent many daily disorders. At the same time, as for all bioactive molecules, careless use of coffee leaf infusions may be unsafe due to their adverse effects, such as the excessive stimulant effects on the central nervous system or their interactions with other concomitantly administered drugs.

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Mistletoe (Viscum album L.) is used in German-speaking European countries in the field of integrative oncology linking conventional and complementary medicine therapies to improve quality of life. Various companies sell extracts, fermented or not, for injection by subcutaneous or intra-tumoral route with a regulatory status of anthroposophic medicinal products (European Medicinal Agency (EMA) assessment status).

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The increasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a worldwide concern. Essential oils are known to possess remarkable antibacterial properties, but their high chemical variability complicates their development into new antibacterial agents. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to standardize their chemical composition.

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To fight the rising resistance of microorganisms to antibiotics, a strategy followed by several researchers is to focus on natural compounds, such as essential oils, as a source of potent antibacterial compounds. These last decades, hundreds of original papers have been written about microbiological assays that prove the antibacterial activity of essential oils and their use in the medical field. But can we really compare all the data available in the literature when the raw material, the microbiological assays, and/or the strains are different from one article to another? This review will point out the differences and the inadequate practices found in published articles that tested 2 lesser-studied essential oils-Spanish lavender and the ajowan-by the broth dilution method against , a human pathogenic bacterium.

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Secondary metabolites are essential for plant survival and reproduction. Wild undomesticated and tropical plants are expected to harbor highly diverse metabolomes. We investigated the metabolomic diversity of two morphologically similar trees of tropical Africa, and , known for particular secondary metabolites named the cassaine-type diterpenoids.

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There is a huge concern in the medical field concerning the emergence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Essential oils are a source of antibacterial compounds that can overcome this problem. Ten essential oils that are commercially available were investigated in the present study: ajowan, basil, German chamomile, Chinese cinnamon, coriander, clove, lemongrass, Spanish lavender, oregano and palmarosa.

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The aim of the present work was to set-up compounds that are able to act simultaneously as antimalarial and antioxidants. Trolox, a known antioxidant was chosen as a core structure to ensure the antioxidant activity and contribute to antiplasmodial effect. Ten compounds were prepared in one step and evaluated on chloroquino-sensitive (3D7) and chloroquino-resistant (FcB1) strains of .

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Human phosphoantigen-reactive Vγ9Vδ2 T cells possess several characteristics, including MHC-independent recognition of tumor cells and potent killing potential, that make them attractive candidates for cancer immunotherapeutic approaches. Injectable preparations from the hemi-parasite plant L. (European mistletoe) are commonly prescribed as complementary cancer therapy in European countries such as Germany, but their mechanism of action remains poorly understood.

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Gliomas remain highly fatal due to their high resistance to current therapies. Deregulation of protein synthesis contributes to cancer onset and progression and is a source of rising interest for new drugs. CM16, a harmine derivative with predicted high blood-brain barrier penetration, exerts antiproliferative effects partly through translation inhibition.

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Coffee is a beverage widely consumed in the world. The coffee species most commercialized worldwide are Arabica ( and Robusta (. Roasted coffee beans are the most used, but coffee leaves are also consumed as infusion in several countries for traditional medicinal purposes.

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While cadmium (Cd) tolerance is a constitutive trait in the Arabidopsis halleri species, Cd accumulation is highly variable. Recent adaptation to anthropogenic metal stress has occurred independently within the genetic units of A. halleri and the evolution of different mechanisms involved in Cd tolerance and accumulation has been suggested.

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Coffee bean extracts are consumed all over the world as beverage and there is a growing interest in coffee leaf extracts as food supplements. The wild diversity in Coffea (Rubiaceae) genus is large and could offer new opportunities and challenges. In the present work, a metabolomics approach was implemented to examine leaf chemical composition of 9 Coffea species grown in the same environmental conditions.

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Abundant literature has been devoted to coffee beans (green or roasted) chemical description but relatively few studies have been devoted to coffee leaves. Given the fact that coffee leaves are used for food and medicinal consumption, it was of interest to develop a rapid screening method in order to identify coffee leaves taxa. Investigation by Fourier - Transform near infrared spectroscopy (FT-NIRS) was performed on nine Coffea taxa leaves harvested over one year in a tropical greenhouse of the Botanic Garden Meise (Belgium).

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Aptamers constitute an emerging class of molecules designed and selected to recognize any given target that ranges from small compounds to large biomolecules, and even cells. However, the underlying physicochemical principles that govern the ligand-binding process still have to be clarified. A major issue when dealing with short oligonucleotides is their intrinsic flexibility that renders their active conformation highly sensitive to experimental conditions.

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Chitosan is obtained by deacetylation of chitin. Chitosan versatility is directly related to the polymer's characteristics depending on the deacetylation process. The aim of this research was to study the parameters influencing deacetylation and to elucidate their effect on acetylation degree (DA) and molecular weight (MW).

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Indolone-N-oxides (INODs) are bioreducible and possess remarkable anti-malarial activities in the low nanomolar range in vitro against different Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum) strains and in vivo. INODs have an original mechanism of action: they damage the host cell membrane without affecting non-parasitized erythrocytes.

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