Anyone tried kudzu (ge-gen, pueraria) as antipurinergic...

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To begin with, let me say that I am thinking here in terms of research, NOT suggesting people run out and do this, because I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing, but I think it would be interesting to know.

Reading papers like www*nature*com/tp/journal/v4/n6/full/tp201433a.html and www*ncbi*nlm*nih*gov/pmc/articles/PMC3596371/ raise the interesting possibility that an antipurinergic drug could "cure" autism, at least in some cases. The drug used in the first paper, Suramin ( en*wikipedia*org/wiki/Suramin]Suramin ), is definitely a broad-spectrum inhibitor of purinergic signalling, but the problem is that (among other things) it is a pretty toxic, nasty drug not readily available for our experimentation.

That said, there really are traditional Chinese medicines with some antipurinergic effects, one of which is a very common herb indeed in some places, namely kudzu (various Pueraria species; known in TCM as Ge gen). Since kudzu (Japanese arrowroot) has been widely used as a food as well as a medicine, I would be hopeful it shouldn't be too dangerous, and I find some indication that kudzu contains components that reduce the expression and therefore the activity of P2X3 ( www*ncbi*nlm*nih*gov/pubmed/19744545 ) and P2X7 ( www*burnsjournal*com/article/S0305-4179(12)00262-8/abstract ); I doubt it is nearly that specific but I don't know. The situation is a little more complicated in that loss of P2X4 ( www*nature*com/npp/journal/v38/n10/full/npp201398a.html ) can cause autism, and loss of P2X2 ( www*pnas*org/content/110/6/2228.full]loss of P2X2 ) is associated with noise-induced hearing damage. The thing is, positive and negative effects are really close together in biology; I think there's something interesting here but it would take more data to understand it.

Which brings me to the question: is there any experience in the community about using this herb, and what effects have been observed? I've been playing with it just recently (still not up to the recommended dose) looking more at metabolic factors like blood sugar and blood pressure, but having had many typical symptoms of autism as a child I am also noting with some interest what I think might be some improvement in executive function, but it is way too soon to reach any conclusion about that even for myself. Anyway, I leave you with these thoughts; make of them what you will.

* Sorry for the broken links; I don't have five things in mind to post about nor will I remember to do it if I wait five days until permitted to use URLs here.