Foods like buckwheat, seen here, amaranth leaves, elderflower tea, apple (unpeeled), rooibos tea and figs are all sources of rutin. By Tolikoff Photography @ Shutterstock.com
Rutin is a compound I came across many years ago, and deserves the attention of anyone trying to live a healthy lifestyle. Here in an article from The Harvard Gazette, Bonnie Prescott explains the work of Robert Flaumenhaft, and the possible benefits of rutin in preventing blood clots. She writes:
A compound called rutin, commonly found in fruits and vegetables and sold over the counter as a dietary supplement, has been shown to inhibit the formation of blood clots in an animal model of thrombosis.
“It’s not always fully appreciated that the majority of Americans will die as the result of a blood clot in either their heart or their brain,” says senior author Robert Flaumenhaft, an investigator in the Division of Hemostasis and Thrombosis at BIDMC and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Approximately half of all morbidity and mortality in the United States can be attributed to heart attack or stroke.”
The study focused on protein disulfide isomerase (PDI), which is found in all cells. Investigators in BIDMC’s Division of Hemostasis and Thrombosis had previously shown that PDI is rapidly secreted from both platelets and endothelial cells during thrombosis, when a clot forms in a blood vessel, and that inhibition of PDI could block thrombosis in a mouse model.
“This was a transformative and unanticipated finding because it identified, for the first time, that PDI is secreted from cells in a live animal and is a potential target for preventing thrombosis,” says Flaumenhaft.
“Rutin proved to be the most potently anti-thrombotic compound that we ever tested in this model,” says Flaumenhaft. Of particular note, rutin was shown to inhibit both platelet accumulation and fibrin generation during thrombus formation. “Clots occur in both arteries and in veins,” explains Flaumenhaft. “Clots in arteries are platelet-rich, while those in veins are fibrin-rich. This discovery suggests that a single agent can treat and prevent both types of clots.”
Even with the use of existing anti-clotting therapies, such as aspirin, clopidogrel (Plavix), and warfarin (Coumadin), each year there are approximately 400,000 recurrent episodes among patients who previously experienced a stroke or heart attack, says Flaumenhaft.
“A safe and inexpensive drug that could reduce recurrent clots could help save thousands of lives,” he adds. “These preclinical trials provide proof-of-principle that PDI is an important therapeutic target for anti-thrombotic therapy, and because the FDA has already established that rutin is safe, we are poised to expeditiously test this idea in a clinical trial, without the time and expense required to establish the safety of a new drug.”
Read more here.
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