[news] Vietnamese herbs as addiction therapy

[Dam Son <son@fermi.phys.washington.edu>]

WASHINGTON, June 23 (UPI) -- U.N. officials announced today they will fund
a study of a promising Vietnamese herbal anti-drug therapy, which may
offer a cheap and effective way to ease addicts from their habits. 

The $400,000 project, which ultimately could expand to include clinical
trials in the United States, would examine the potential of Heantos, a
blend of 13 plants found in abundance in Vietnam. In a two-year study in
Vietnam, 95 percent of the more than 300 heroin addicts treated with
Heantos remained drug-free. 

The first phase of the project would verify the safety and efficacy claims
of the treatment, said Dr. Lutz Baehr, the United Nations Development
Programme's international coordinator for the project. The second phase
would establish the procedures for cooperation between the Vietnamese and
American institutions involved with the project, including Johns Hopkins
University. 

If these two phases of the project are successful, later phases could
include clinical trials among up to 200 patients in the United States. 

Heantos was developed in the early 1980s by Dr. Tran Khuong Dan, a
scientist and herbalist with the Vietnam National Center for Natural
Science and Technology. Dan was motivated both by the local drug problem
in Ho Chi Minh City and by the fact that his father and his brother each
suffered from opium addiction for more than 27 years. 

Dr. Tran Van Sung, a deputy director of the Institute of Chemistry at the
Vietnamese center, said that the goal of their work was to develop an
anti-drug medicine that could be used in Vietnam and in other countries
that would "bring the drug addict back into the community." 

Officials said the treatment offers the possibility of a cost-effective
alternative to Methadone, a widely used drug addiction therapy. A typical
course of treatment with Heantos, which consists of taking the medicine in
a liquid form for three to five days and then taking the medicine in
capsule form for one to six months to prevent recidivism, costs only $70,
said Dan.