Home remedies

Fantastic posts, Shamik!! So, I saw a case of "neutrophilic urticaria" today in derm clinic. Obviously, most urticaria is hypersensitivity IgE mediated, but this is a more rare and treatment-resistant form of urticaria. It's typically treated with dapsone, which actually inhibits neutrophil chemotaxis. This patient, however, was G6PD deficient and had severe hemolysis with dapsone and, furthermore, developed methemoglobinemia. It got me to thinking though. What else inhibits neutrophil function and could potentially be used as an alternative treatment? I did a pubmed search and found the following article published in CHEST (2000) by Rennard et al, which I thought was interesting/entertaining:

"Chicken soup inhibits neutrophil chemotaxis in vitro."
ABSTRACT: Chicken soup has long been regarded as a remedy for symptomatic upper respiratory tract infections. As it is likely that the clinical similarity of the diverse infectious processes that can result in "colds" is due to a shared inflammatory response, an effect of chicken soup in mitigating inflammation could account for its attested benefits. To evaluate this, a traditional chicken soup was tested for its ability to inhibit neutrophil migration using the standard Boyden blindwell chemotaxis chamber assay with zymosan-activated serum and fMet-Leu-Phe as chemoattractants. Chicken soup significantly inhibited neutrophil migration and did so in a concentration-dependent manner. The activity was present in a nonparticulate component of the chicken soup. All of the vegetables present in the soup and the chicken individually had inhibitory activity, although only the chicken lacked cytotoxic activity. Interestingly, the complete soup also lacked cytotoxic activity. Commercial soups varied greatly in their inhibitory activity. The present study, therefore, suggests that chicken soup may contain a number of substances with beneficial medicinal activity. A mild anti-inflammatory effect could be one mechanism by which the soup could result in the mitigation of symptomatic upper respiratory tract infections.

This seemed to be a pretty rigorous study of chicken soup published in Chest, of all journals! I continued to wonder: "Well, what about orange juice?" I found a Cochrane review article, "Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold." by Douglas et al (2004). The trials in which vitamin C was introduced at the onset of colds as therapy did not show any benefit in doses up to 4 grams daily, but one large trial reported equivocal benefit from an 8 gram therapeutic dose at onset of symptoms. Now, you may ask yourself, "How many glasses of OJ would it take to get 8g of vitamin C." And, yes, I did the calculation. It would take 64.5 8oz glasses of orange juice to get an "equivocal benefit."

In brief, no, OJ doesn't help, and who knows if chicken soup has any clinical benefit...but it inhibits neutrophil chemotaxis which is pretty cool. So, now you have the answer next time someone asks you about OJ and chicken soup!