Black cohosh may reduce hot flashes by targeting brain's thermostat.

2003 OCT 2 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Black cohosh, a medicinal herb increasingly used by women as an alternative to estrogen replacement therapy, may reduce hot flashes by targeting serotonin receptors - some of the same receptors used by the brain to help regulate body temperature, according to a team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The finding, the first to demonstrate a possible mechanism of action for the herb other than estrogen, increases the likelihood that the herb is safe to use, they say.

The study was described at a press briefing on hormone replacement therapy at the 226th national meeting of the American Chemical Society and published in the September 10, 2003, issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Until now, many scientists thought that black cohosh (koh-hawsh) worked by targeting receptors for estrogen, the same hormone used in commercial hormone replacement medicine that has recently been associated with adverse side effects, including breast cancer and stroke.

"This study shows that black cohosh does not appear to be estrogenic whatsoever and, as a result, is less likely to pose some of the dangers associated with traditional estrogen replacement therapy," says study leader Judy L. Bolton, PhD, a professor at the university's College of Pharmacy. "We now have new clues to how it might work in the body."

Although preliminary evidence of the herb's efficacy in relieving hot flashes, night sweats, and other symptoms of menopause is encouraging, further studies are still needed before it can be recommended, Bolton says. Long-term safety data on black cohosh are also needed, she adds.

To determine whether black cohosh is estrogenic, the researchers used a group of rats whose ovaries had been removed. The rats were divided into different groups and each group was fed a different concentration of cohosh extract daily for 2 weeks. Extracts of the herb, either alone or in combination with synthetic ...