The North European fields of the future will not only be supplying food, feed and bio energy. They will also be supplying plant medicine. Scientists are paving the way by identifying the most promising plants and then finding the most suitable ones and documenting their effect.

In the future, the Danish landscape may not only be clothed in golden and yellow fields of barley, wheat, and rapeseed. A few years down the road the agricultural fields may be dedicated to more than production of animal feed, human food, and fuel for our cars. Perhaps the Danish fields will be the place where we can find products for the pharmacy of the future in the form of plant medicine.

Scientists from the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at the University of Aarhus are collaborating with scientists from the University of Southern Denmark and Christian Albrecht’s University in Kiel to investigate which plants are of interest with regard to type 2 diabetes and how they can be grown in Northern Europe.

Plant medicine can be effective against lifestyle diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases and have been used for centuries. In a country like China the use of traditional medicine is still the most common form of treatment. Plants with therapeutic or preventive effect can also be grown under Danish climate conditions to the advantage of both Danish agriculture and Danish consumers.

Whether the fields of tomorrow in Northern Europe will be filled with fragrant thyme, sage, and oregano or blooms of orange marigolds and yellow dandelions remains to be seen. So far, the scientists have screened a wide range of plants that were likely to have an effect against type 2 diabetes.

- Plants have been used traditionally against diabetes for centuries in many countries. Most of the plants that we are working with have been selected based on this traditional use. The rest of the plants have been chosen on the basis of other criteria e.g. they contain compounds that have an interesting chemical structure similar to those of other anti-diabetic compounds, says PhD student Kathrine Bisgaard Christensen from the Department of Food Science at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences (DJF), University of Aarhus.

Hot on the plant trail

The first step in the project has been to grow the selected plants and then screen extracts of these in order to see if they have the desired potential effect against diabetes. The next step will be to isolate and identify the compounds in the plants that are responsible for the observed bioactivity. The scientists will then have to document the effect of the compounds against diabetes in both cell cultures and animals (mice and rats).

A basic requirement for the selection of the plants for the project was that they should be able to grow in Northern Europe in suitable yields. This is due to the fact that one of the goals of the research project is to create a niche production in Denmark and Germany of plants that can be used for plant medicine or functional foods. So far, the scientists have tested 21 plant species, including sage, oregano, savory, dandelion, buckwheat, marigold, and nettles.

- Almost 60 percent of the tested plant species have been shown to exhibit a potential effect against diabetes 2. The first active compound has been found and we expect to find many more different compounds, says Kathrine Bisgaard Christensen. Among the plants with promising effects are fenugreek, stinging nettle, elderberry flowers, purple coneflower, savory, and sage.

Obesity, type 2 diabetes, and the drugs prescribed for this can be a vicious circle. Type 2 diabetes is often seen in people who are overweight and have a high risk of developing insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is a condition in which the body cannot utilise insulin optimally. The pancreas will try to compensate for this by producing more insulin but is only able to do so for a while. If the problem is not addressed the patient will develop a high level of glucose in the blood and hence, diabetes.

The recommended treatment of type 2 diabetes is first and foremost a change in lifestyle, i.e. a healthy diet and more exercise. However, this is usually not enough and therefore medication is required. Some of the drugs prescribed work by re-establishing insulin sensitivity. Unfortunately, one of the side effects is that the patient gains even more weight. It is therefore of interest to find natural products without side effects that can replace or supplement the existing drugs.

- Natural health products are not hocus-pocus, but for many of them there is simply not enough scientific documentation of their effect and how they work. There are also a lot of charlatans who ruin things for the serious part of the market with negligent quality control and so on. Extraction and treatment methods, harvest time, species, and which parts of the plant that are used are all important for the quality and effect of the final product. With the studies we are undertaking we know precisely what material we are working with and therefore we can be sure of using extracts of uniform quality in all our studies, says senior scientist Lars Porskjær Christensen from the Department of Food Science at DJF.

For more information please contact:

PhD student Kathrine Bisgaard Christensen, Department of Food Science, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Aarhus, telephone: +45 8999 3426, e-mail: Kathrine.Bisgaard@agrsci.dk

Senior scientist, adjunct professor, Lars Porskjær Christensen, Department of Food Science, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Aarhus, telephone: +45 8999 3367, e-mail: LarsP.Christensen@agrsci.dk

Text: Janne Hansen

Photo: Kathrine Bisgaard Christensen