From Professor E. J. Shellard, FRPharmS
SIR,-I was interested to read the note by "Onlooker" entitled "Alzheimer remedy" (PJ, May 27, p756) because when I was at the FIP congress in Prague in 1965 I attended a talk given by a Russian pharmacognosist (I cannot remember his name). He told us about the peasant women living at the foot of the Caucasian mountains who, when their young children developed symptoms of an illness which, as he described them, was obviously poliomylelitis, they gave them a decoction of the bulbs of the Caucasian snowdrop (Galanthus woroncwii Los) and the children completely recovered without showing any signs of paralysis. When I returned home I wrote about this to the few pharmaceutical companies in England at the time but there was no response.
However, when I went to Sofia in 1971 to give some lectures, I found that the alkaloid from this plant, galanthamine, was already on the market as an anticholesterinase drug. It was called Nivalin because the Bulgarians had found it in the snowdrop growing there - Galanthus nivalis L, although they were actually obtaining it from Leucojum aestivum L, which gave much higher quanitites. I was taken to see this plant being cultivated on quite a large scale.
Much of the pharmacological work on this alkaloid was undertaken in Sofia by Professor D. S. Paskov and this is fully reported in a review he wrote in the 'Handbook of experimental pharmacology' (vol 79, chap 31, 1986). Its action on nicotine receptors in the brain and its effect on sufferers from Alzheimer's disease is, of course, a recent development. The initial research on the pharmacokinetics of this alkaloid was undertaken by Dr (now Professor) D. Mihailova-Kasatova at the Sofia school of pharmacy, 1983-1993. During one of her visits to the Chelsea department of pharmacy, one of my pharmacognostical colleagues was able to determine the conformation of one of the metabolites, epigalanthamine, for her.
E. J. Shellard
Hounslow, Middlesex