LONDON, Jan. 17 (UPI)

A British computer screening of herbs commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine suggests some may be useful in treating modern diseases. David Barlow and colleagues at King’s College London found a wide variety of the compounds have the potential for use in treating HIV-AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer’s, arthritis and other diseases. The researchers say computer simulation is becoming increasingly effective in identifying promising compounds that could be candidates for drug development. The researchers screened a database of chemical structures of Chinese herbal constituents from 240 species of plants for possible activity against various diseases. About 62 percent of the species were found to contain chemicals with characteristics required for activity against at least one disease and 53 percent against two or more diseases. The research is to be detailed in the March 26 issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.

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