Cirsium maackii

The only human trial in this record, and it does not test the herb alone. MS-10 is a fixed combination of this thistle with Thymus vulgaris, so nothing in the result can be attributed to the thistle by itself. A double-blind placebo-controlled trial in 71 women, described in the paper as premenopausal, ran to 4 and 12 weeks. Kupperman index scores improved by about 48 percent and menopause-specific quality of life by about 36 percent across vasomotor, psychosocial, physical and sexual domains. Serum IGF-1 and endothelin-1 moved, as did osteocalcin, bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, CTx, deoxypyridinoline and NTx, and cortisol fell. The report is single-centre, funded around a commercial product, and the sample is small; treat the effect size as provisional.

The animal work underlying the menopause claim, on this species alone. Ovariectomised rats given 50 or 100 mg/kg of extract for 10 weeks lost body weight and showed significantly lower total cholesterol, triglyceride, LDL and HDL, significantly higher 17-beta-oestradiol and higher bone mineral density, and spent more time in the light chamber in a light and dark box test. Docking predicted binding of the active compounds to the ligand-binding domains of oestrogen receptor alpha and beta. The oestradiol rise is the finding to carry forward as a safety signal, not only as an efficacy one.

Chondrocyte and mouse work. The extract reduced IL-1beta, IL-6, IL-17 and TNF-alpha-driven upregulation of MMP3, MMP13, ADAMTS4, ADAMTS5 and COX-2 and blocked disease progression in the destabilisation-of-the-medial-meniscus mouse model of osteoarthritis. Mechanistically it inhibited Hif-2alpha activation. The paper is careful about which constituent does the work: cirsimarin, cirsimaritin and apigenin are all present and all anti-inflammatory, but only apigenin reduced Hif-2alpha and blocked the downstream catabolic genes.

Six weeks of extract in db/db type 2 diabetic mice reduced body weight and fat mass, lowered blood glucose, improved insulin sensitivity, raised serum HDL and lowered LDL, and reduced histological liver and kidney damage. This is the whole-animal counterpart to the enzyme-inhibition data on luteolin and hispidulin, and it is the basis for treating a co-prescription with oral hypoglycaemics as an additive-effect risk rather than a theoretical one.

Behavioural mouse study. The ethyl acetate fraction improved spatial memory in the T-maze, object recognition and Morris water maze performance in mice given intracerebroventricular amyloid beta 25-35, and dose-dependently reduced lipid peroxidation and nitric oxide production. It is model-level evidence about a fraction, not evidence of benefit in dementia; no clinical study of this herb in cognitive impairment exists.

Cell-culture hepatoprotection, and useful for its plant-part comparison: methanol extracts of root, stem, leaf and flower were all tested, alongside four isolated flavonoids. Pretreatment reduced reactive oxygen species, restored depleted glutathione and upregulated Nrf2 and HO-1 in HepG2 cells challenged with tert-butyl hydroperoxide. Note the common name used in the paper: this is not Silybum marianum, the Western milk thistle, and none of the silymarin evidence transfers.

An enzyme and glycation assay across seven Korean thistles, in which the leaves of this species were the most active. Bioassay-guided fractionation of the ethyl acetate fraction yielded a lignan, chlorogenic acid and 14 flavonoids, 14 of them new to the species. Cernuoside was the most potent antiglycation compound at IC50 21.21 micromolar, with luteolin at 36.33 and luteolin 5-O-glucoside at 37.47 micromolar. Activity tracked with free 3' and 4' hydroxyls on the flavonoid B-ring.