Remember the recent paper by well known artemisinin researchers Lai and Singh from U-Dub in Washington state (HERBLOG flashback)? Well Holley Pharmaceuticals have made available a sodium butyrate preparation - in capsules. Of course they do not say what the recommended dose of butyrate is - the bad news is that to attain 1.0 millmolar plasma levels that approximate the experimental concentrations that produced a ten fold increase in artemisinin effect - you need to take at least 10 grams (10,000 mg ) a day.In brain tumors, doses up to 20 g /day have been used. The Holley caps contain 600 mg sodium butyrate, so thats about 16-30Â caps per day. A lot.
The good news is that butyrate is totally non toxic (its a food ingredient found typically in butter) and is a selective nutrient for colonocytes. At these high doses the main side effect is…body odor. Oh well. 10 x synergy with artemsinin is worth a bit of a stink.
Butyrate acts as a class of anticancer agent called ‘histone deacetylase inhibitors” - and has been used alone and in combination with other drugs as an anticancer therapy. It is not clear whether affecting histones is the mechanism of sensitization to artemisinin - probably not, but at this stage we do not know.