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Baicalin: anyone have experience using?

fireflymd

Senior Member
Messages
110
Does anyone here have any experience using Baicalin as an anti-viral/anti-retroviral?

If you used this successfully, how much did you take and for how long?

Please feel free to direct message me if you do not wish to post on the forum.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
It worth mentioning that both baicalein and baicalin are antiviral, at least in vitro. Both compounds are found in skullcap herb (Scutellaria lateriflora) and Chinese skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis).

Baicalein has been shown antiviral for coxsackievirus B3 (a virus linked to ME/CFS) in an in vitro study.
Baicalin has been shown antiviral for enterovirus 71 (a virus not linked to ME/CFS) in an in vitro study.

Baicalin has also been shown to induce interferon alpha, beta and gamma in vitro, and so in principle may have some antiviral effects against viruses susceptible to interferon therapy, which include coxsackievirus B3 and B5 (but not CVB4, according to Dr Chia).

However, a while ago I did some pharmacokinetic calculations to work out what sort of human oral dose of baicalein and baicalin would be required in order to reach the antiviral concentrations used in those in vitro studies. It turns out that these human oral doses would be impossibly high. So at any normal dose levels, you are not going get any significant antiviral effect from either baicalein or baicalin (assuming my calculations are correct).


Most of the time, antiviral studies of herbs, supplements or drugs are carried out in vitro, in a cell line. In the cell line, compounds can have potent antiviral effects when added at certain concentrations, but these effects often do not translate to antiviral actions in vivo, due to the fact that it would require an impossibly high oral dose of the compound in order to achieve the same concentration in the bloodstream and the body tissues.
 
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heapsreal

iherb 10% discount code OPA989,
Messages
10,089
Location
australia (brisbane)
Baicalin (BA), (formulated as 7-D-glucuronic acid-5,6-dihydroxy-flavone), was purified from the plant Scutellaria Baicalensis Georgi. It has been used as a traditional Chinese herbal medicine. The inhibitory effect of BA against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) infection and replication has been studied in vitro. The compound inhibits HIV-1 infection and replication as measured by: (1) a quantitative focal syncytium formation on CEM-ss monolayer cells; and (2) HIV-1 specific core antigen p24 expression and retroviral reverse transcriptase (RT) activity in the HIV-1-infected H9 cells. We have further demonstrated that the enzymatic activity of purified recombinant HIV-1/RT was inhibited by BA. In addition to lymphoid cell lines, the anti-HIV-1 activity of BA was also observed in cultures of primary human peripheral blood mononuclear cells infected with HIV-1 in vitro. Neither cytotoxic nor cytostatic effects on the indicator cells were found under the assay condition. This data suggests that BA may serve as a useful drug for the treatment and prevention of HIV infections.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7693133
 

Hanna

Senior Member
Messages
717
Location
Jerusalem, Israel
I used Chinese Skullcap for a while (a few months) and it seems it calmed down some racing thoughts I had, even at nights. But this was part of my routine for Lyme co-infections and not for a viral purpose.
 

fireflymd

Senior Member
Messages
110
I just read Buhner’s Healing Lyme and did not realize the purpose of the herbs is to make it more difficult for Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete to access nutrients by reducing/modulating the inflammation and cytokine cascade. This also reduces the spirochete’s ability to cause further damage. Then the immune system or antibiotics can get to work on killing the spirochetes.

This is a major oversimplification of his book, which I highly recommend to anyone dealing with Lyme. Fascinating information.

Repeatedly throughout the book he mentions the herb, Scutellaria baicalensis as being an excellent cytokine remodulator.

It would be interesting to see one day if the reason this helps some ME/CFS patients lies in its anti-retroviral properties or the fact that it is a cytokine modulator that has been helpful in the process to induce Lyme remission/recovery.