Abstract
Extracts of frankincense, the gum resin of Boswellia species, have been extensively used in traditional folk medicine since ancient times and are still of great interest as promising anti-inflammatory remedies in Western countries. Despite their common therapeutic use and the intensive pharmacological research including studies on active ingredients, modes of action, bioavailability, pharmacokinetics, and clinical efficacy, frankincense preparations are available as nutraceuticals but have not yet approved as a drug on the market. A major issue of commercially available frankincense nutraceuticals is the striking differences in their composition and quality, especially related to the content of boswellic acids (BAs) as active ingredients, mainly due to the use of material from divergent Boswellia species but also because of different work-up and extraction procedures. Here, we assessed three frequently used frankincense-based preparations for their BA content and the interference with prominent pro-inflammatory actions and targets that have been proposed, that is, 5-lipoxygenase and leukotriene formation in human neutrophils, microsomal prostaglandin E2 synthase-1, and inflammatory cytokine secretion in human blood monocytes. Our data reveal striking differences in the pharmacological efficiencies of these preparations in inflammation-related bioassays which obviously correlate with the amounts of BAs they contain. In summary, high-quality frankincense extracts display powerful anti-inflammatory effectiveness against multiple targets which can be traced back to BAs as bioactive ingredients.
Highlights
Frankincense, the gum resin from various Boswellia species, is an ancient remedy used for centuries in Asian and African folk medicine, especially in traditional Ayurvedic medicine in India [1,2,3]
In an attempt to combat the jumble of qualitatively different frankincense products in the botanical dietary market, capsules containing Boswellia serrata extracts of the highest pharmaceutical quality complying with the requirements of the European Pharmacopoeia monograph for “Indian Frankincense” are available for therapeutic use
None of the frankincense-based remedies significantly blocked the release of IL-6 or tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, while dexamethasone suppressed both responses, especially IL-6 release (Figure 5)
Summary
In an attempt to combat the jumble of qualitatively different frankincense products in the botanical dietary market, capsules containing Boswellia serrata extracts of the highest pharmaceutical quality complying with the requirements of the European Pharmacopoeia monograph for “Indian Frankincense” (monograph 10.0/2310) are available for therapeutic use. The present study aimed at analyzing the comparability of frequently used commercial Boswellia serrata-based remedies for pharmaceutical quality, employing (i) “Sallaki® Tablets”, an Indian authorized medicinal product, (ii) “H15 Ayurmedica® ”, representing a renowned. German frankincense-containing dietary botanical, and (iii) “BOSWELLIASAN® ” that are Indian frankincense capsules For this purpose, the content of the six major BAs (KBA, AKBA, βBA, AβBA, α-BA, and AαBA) were determined in each preparation, and the efficiency to interfere with inflammation-relevant molecular targets (i.e., 5-LOX, mPGES-1, and cytokines) was evaluated in cell-free and/or cell-based models using appropriate cell types
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