The American government is funding new initiatives to boost complementary medicine research, in the hope that ancient knowledge from other cultures may one day also benefit the US public.
Provided through its National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the funding will go to new partnerships between US and international research teams to study how traditional medicine is practiced in other cultures.
Teams have already been given planning grants to set up the infrastructure for their research, allowing them to compete for the NCCAM International Center for Research on CAM. The projects include research on chinese medicine for women's health and bowel health and a Harvard University initiative to establish a US-China-Japan research consortium on herbal medicine.
"It is our hope that this initiative will encourage research in traditional medicine and result in research that benefits the health of citizens in many countries," said Dr John Killen, director of NCCAM's Office of International Health Research. "We know that 80 per cent of the world's population uses plants to meet their primary health care needs, so research on indigenous practices can lead to significant advances in global health."
NCCAM has also made the first two awards in a new program to establish Centers of Excellence for Research on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This is designed to support established researchers in using modern technologies to research CAM, currently lacking sufficient scientific evidence of its efficacy and safety despite widespread use by consumers.
One of the awards, worth $5.8 million, goes to Dr Balz Frei at Oregon State University to study the role of antioxidants, such as alpha lipoic acid, in the prevention and treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cardiovascular disease, and aging in general.
"The establishment of these first Centers of Excellence is testimony to the continuing maturation of research on CAM. Highly accomplished investigators at major research institutions are dedicating themselves to exploring CAM. The field needs this enhanced level of experience and rigor to transform the promise of CAM into proven treatments," said Dr Stephen E. Straus, NCCAM director.