August 26, 2005
Noni revenue up; kava still sells
The 2004 farm value of Hawaii medicinal crops, including noni and kava, hit $1.2 million, up 61 percent, farming statisticians said Thursday.
The cultivation of noni, also known as Indian mulberry, accounts for most of the acreage and production in this category.
Higher yields from maturing noni fields is the main reason for the rapid rise in production, the National Agricultural Statistics Service Hawaii Field Office said.
Noni is a relatively small evergreen shrub that is a member of the coffee family. Thought to have been introduced by early Polynesian settlers, it can now be found throughout the state growing in lava fields, forests and near streams. Commercial noni cultivation, however, is mainly concentrated on the Big Island. Noni fruit is harvested year-round but production is generally lighter in the winter months.
While all parts of the noni plant have traditional uses, it is the fruit that is of greatest commercial value today. The fruit and juice contain compounds that could potentially treat Alzheimer's, hypertension and arthritic conditions. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is sponsoring a study of noni in cancer patients.
Kava, known in Hawaii as awa, is another popular medicinal crop grown in Hawaii.
Output has declined from a peak of 450,000 pounds fresh weight in 2001 due to world health concerns but awa remains an important commercial and cultural crop locally.
Like the noni plant, kava was introduced into Hawaii by early Polynesians for its medicinal uses. In the case of kava it is the stumps and roots that have the most commercial value because they contain high levels of kavalactones, the active ingredients that make kava valuable.
Kavalactone levels normally peak when the plant is between 18 to 24 months old. The juice from fresh or dried roots is made into a drink that is served as a relaxant.
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Sunday, July 24, 2005
Noni shows cancer promise
A study by UH researchers explores the plant's possible pain-relieving benefits to patients
By Helen Altonn haltonn@starbulletin.com
Cancer Research Center of Hawaii researchers are getting reports from patients taking noni that they have less pain that interferes with activities.
"That is exciting to us. It may be reducing the pain people experience, but we can't say. It's too early for a definitive conclusion," said Carolyn Gotay about the center's study of the fruit's medical value.
Dr. Brian Issell, internist, oncologist and clinical sciences program director at the University of Hawaii cancer center, is principal investigator of the study, which began in 2001.
Dr. Brian Issell, above, holds noni capsules while research nurse Faith Inoshita holds a noni plant in Issell's office at the University of Hawaii's Cancer Research Center.
The noni plant was used in traditional healing throughout Polynesia and is being promoted worldwide for all kinds of health problems and diseases.
"It's a $2 billion product with incredible commercialization," Issell said. "We need to know if it helps more than harms people."
His study is the first to look at the effects of noni on people and see if it does what ads claim.
"We've seen pretty much improvements across the board when we look statistically, but these are early days," Issell said. "It's not telling us it's going to help more than harm people, but what dose we will test in the future."
The team, including Faith Inoshita, clinical research nurse, is trying to complete the first phase of the study to find the right dose that will be effective for people, Issell said. Then the researchers will move to the next phase comparing that dose of noni a placebo.
Different doses of freeze-dried extract of ripe noni from the Indian mulberry plant are given to groups of five patients. Participants have advanced cancer that no other treatment would help.
Capsules are increased gradually from four a day to 24 and the patients are followed to see the effects.
"We have been seeing increasing improvement in quality of life measures," Issell said. "It's very interesting. We're getting improvement at higher dose levels compared to a lower dose."
Dr. Adrian Franke, associate specialist, and Laurie Custer, research associate, are analyzing the ingredients of noni, as well as blood and urine samples from patients, to see what chemicals may have anti-cancer activity.
"We're measuring different markers," Issell said. "Once we have something we can feel confident about, we will use it to standardize noni because there are hundreds of different products now from juice, with additional things to mask the dose."
Noni Maui is providing fruit grown on the Big Island for the study, which requires a consistent supply, Issell said: "We have quite a lot of capsules and will continue up to 40 (per day) if we need to."
The first phase of the study began with National Institutes of Health funding and it is continuing with support from the Hawaii Community Foundation, Issell said.
He said the issue with cancer drugs is to find the maximum tolerated dose that's most likely to have an anti-cancer effect.
"Here, we haven't found the maximum-tolerated dose," he said. "We have to find the optimal quality of life sustaining dose. It's a complex question."
Patients fill out questionnaires about how they're feeling, how their pain is, their fatigue and how they function.
Gotay said patients are still tolerating the doses with no side effects. "We haven't observed any worsening of the quality of life. In fact, even though these patients tend to have advanced disease, their quality of life has pretty much maintained steady or gotten better in some cases."
She said they're looking at the well-being of the patients from many aspects and "people are holding their own."
The participants "are amazingly committed," Gotay said. "They have serious conditions and high hopes for treatment and they're very eager to take their pills. They're very conscientious about it. They're trying to help us and themselves, too, and future patients.
"It's a long ways from even identifying, say it were to work, why it works, what are the active ingredients," Gotay said.
Noni is a substance that hasn't followed drug lab development, so it isn't known exactly what's in it, how it works on the body or what kind of patients it would make a difference in, she said.
For instance, she asked, "Would it be effective in people with earlier stage disease? We can't test that in the (present) study."
Issell gets inquiries about noni from all over the world, Gotay pointed out: "That's partly why we are so cautious. We want to make sure (of the results)."
Franke and his team is looking at how the ingredients affect different systems of the body, Gotay said. "There are so many different possibilities of what might be going on."
He gave different doses of noni to healthy volunteers -- Cancer Research Center employees -- and drew their blood over an eight-hour period to see how noni processed in healthy people to compare with cancer patients.
For more information about the noni study, call the clinical trials unit, 586-2979.
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Monday, April 4, 2005
Hawaii-grown noni poised to grow with the industry
By Tara Godvin
Associated Press
For centuries, residents of the South Pacific have used the noni plant to treat a host of ills, from joint to breathing problems or just plain pain. Now some farmers and business developers are looking to this traditional healing plant to expand Hawaii's agricultural market.
What sounds like an obscure niche market is actually big business.
In just eight years, Utah-based Tahitian Noni International has expanded to sell noni products across the globe, reporting $500 million in sales last year alone.
"We've also spawned an industry. There are probably 250 companies around the world that make noni products," said Andre Peterson, spokesman for the company, which exclusively uses noni plants grown in French Polynesia.
Just about every part of the noni plant has some claimed medicinal properties. But the most popular form is the distinctive-tasting -- some fans even say "nasty" -- juice of the noni plant's odd-looking, whitish fruit.
The noni industry in Hawaii is just beginning to take off, said Spencer Kamauoha, vice president of the Kamauoha Foundation, which works with economic development, including small farmers, on Oahu.
In 2003 the foundation was awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Administration for Native Americans to develop an 80-acre noni farm in Waialua and fruit-processing plant at Wahiawa. Those funds just began to flow this fall.
And the foundation was notified last month it would be receiving another $84,000 from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and $75,000 from Honolulu's community investment fund, he said.
"It's one of those indigenous things of Hawaii that the market is sitting there. It's being developed all over the Pacific," Kamauoha said.
The project has quickly become a major player in the local noni market after discovering 22 small farmers on the Big Island who were growing the plants and needed a processor.
Kamauoha Farms now receives 16,000 pounds of the fruit from Hilo each week, and will be opening up a collection warehouse in Kona for local farmers this weekend.
While it ships most of its product to a distributor on the mainland, the company plans to put its own brand of noni fruit juice on shelves next month, labeling it North Shore Noni.
"So what I think needs to be developed, too, is the Hawaii brand and the Hawaii source as a source of noni in its own right," Kamauoha said.
That idea has caught the attention of House Speaker Calvin Say (D, St. Louis Heights-Wilhelmina Rise) and Rep. Helene Hale (D, Pahoa-Kalapana), who co-sponsored a resolution this session in support of the local noni industry and small-scale noni growers.
"The problem is that we need some help with this industry to really show people what it really can do," Hale told the House Agriculture Committee during a hearing on the resolution Wednesday.
Hale also offered her own testimonial. After a recent fall, she found herself with a black eye, which a native Hawaiian friend suggested could be cured with a heated noni leaf.
After applying the leaf, the eye cleared up in a day, Hale said.
While most of the support behind the noni plant's medicinal value is similarly anecdotal, there are some scientific studies under way.
The University of Hawaii Cancer Research Center has been conducting human trials using capsules of powdered noni extract since 2001.
While there have been no adverse effects on patients, there also has not been anything positive attributable to the plant, said Dr. Brian Issell, director of clinical trials at the center.
Originally funded by the National Institutes of Health, the center is looking for local funding to continue the work, "because I think we need some answers on it. I would hate to not get some answers about noni," Issell said.
Patrick Walsh, founder of the Big Island company Estate Noni and the constituent of Hale's who inspired the House resolution, said he hopes an approved measure will mean more support from the state for his industry.
Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Janelle Saneishi said she was not aware of any state agriculture programs targeting noni cultivation.
Murphy said he would like to see the formation of a state noni council to help bolster and maintain quality in the industry -- a sentiment shared by other farmers.
David Backstrom, president and chief executive officer of Noni Maui in Kula, said he would also like to see state-funded research on the benefits of the noni plant, which could reap the economic benefits of greater agricultural diversity.
"The potential is there. ... It'd be good to organize and work as an ohana, a Hawaiian family," Backstrom said.
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Monday, 18 December, 2000, 23:03 GMT
Hawaiian plant could fight TB
Tuberculosis bacteria: vulnerable to traditional cure
By the BBC's John Duce
Scientists believe they have found a significant new lead in the fight against one of the world's biggest killers, tuberculosis.
They say that extracts from a plant used as a folk remedy in various parts of the world kill TB bacteria and could be the basis of a new drug.
TB's annual toll
About 2 million deaths
Around 8 million people become sick
More than 1.5 million cases in sub-Saharan Africa
Nearly 3 million cases in south-east Asia
More than 250,000 cases in Eastern Europe
Source: WHO
About two million people a year die from tuberculosis and researchers say new ways of tackling the disease are urgently needed as drug-resistant strains of the bacteria develop.
A team headed by Jonel Saludes, a researcher formerly based at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila in the Philippines, has been studying a plant known as 'Noni' in Hawaii, or Morinda citrofolia, to give it its scientific name.
It is used in various places around the world as a folk remedy to fight numerous ailments and the researchers have been able to isolate chemical compounds which they say appear remarkably effective at killing TB bacteria under laboratory conditions.
Preliminary results
The scientists stress their research is at a very early stage and any potential side-effects on people are unknown, but they hope their findings will ultimately lead to the development of a new drug.
Tuberculosis is an airborne, infectious disease, in which bacteria infect the lungs and other areas of the body.
Medicines are available to fight TB, but drug-resistant strains of the bacteria are developing, hastening the need for alternate remedies.
Most people killed by tuberculosis live in South East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, but the World Health Organisation (WHO) says new outbreaks have begun to occur in Eastern Europe after almost 40 years of steady falls in the number of infections.
The WHO says people with HIV are particularly at risk of dying from the disease because their immune systems are so weak.
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