Herbal Composition treatment achieving 37.5% SVR -- US patent (Please comment)

[samosa]

Hi All,

I came across this US patent application that claims that a herbal compostion was used to treat people with Hep B and C and in the case of C 37.5 % of the patients achieved SVR after 6mo whereas in the case of Hep B 50% of the patients achieved SVR. I found this at the US patent office site so I thought that it should not be total bogus. Being naturally a skeptic I would like you all to read this and form an opinion. If its true it would be great news for all of us!

Any Comments?

here is the link

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=5&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=Helenium&OS=Helenium

[MichaelT]

As devoid of any legitamacy as homeopathy and naturopathy is I still haven't lost my hope that there is something better out there.

If there is <I>any</I> benefit from this mixture, identifying the active elements and more accurately dosing them would be a great thing.

[Revenire]

Any herbal products that do better than what we have now would be on the market now, probably being produced by the same drug companies that gave us Pegasys and Peg-Intron right?

It seems highly suspect. I've met too many natural cure blood-suckers when it comes to hepatitis already.

[Galen]

I read the whole document and in the first study conducted there were only 20 subjects and in the second, there were 22.  The patients self-administered the concoction and were not under medical observation.  In addition, there were no other independent studies noted that duplicated the results.  INMO, this stuff is probably worth looking into if another, independent lab can duplicate the responses.  On the other hand, anyone can apply for a patent for anything.  Application or approval (which they do not have at this time) does not mean that anything works or is of any use at all.  Interesting that this company has applied for a patent instead of applying for FDA approval.

[MajNeni]

For anyone who has too little to keep them out of trouble, or just too little motivation to move away from the computer, these are good starting points:

http://www.crazypatents.com/
http://www.purdue-law.com/wackypatents.html
http://www.patent.freeserve.co.uk/