Mangosteen and Inflammation

Mangosteen and Pain & Inflammation

1 out of 6 Americans suffering from pain

Chronic daily headaches 4 to 5 percent of the population

Migraines 28 to 30 million people suffer (70% are women)

Arthritis 41 million Americans Suffer *

Fibromyalgia 3 affects 3-- 6 million (80% are women) *

$8 Billion+ spent on over-the-counter pain relievers

$30 Billion + prescription pain relievers

*American College of Rheumatology (ACR)


“Suddenly, inflammation has become one of the hottest areas of medical
research. Hardly a week goes by without the publication of yet another
study uncovering a new way that chronic inflammation does harm to the
body. It destabilizes cholesterol deposits in the coronary arteries,
leading to heart attacks and potentially even strokes. It chews up nerve cells in the brains of Alzheimer’s victims. It may even foster the proliferation of abnormal cells and facilitate their transformation
into cancer. In other words, chronic inflammation may be the engine
that drives many of the most feared illnesses of middle and old
age.”TIME Feb 23rd, 2004

Independent Research From Across the World
Regarding Mangosteen’s impact on Inflammation.

Synthesis and anti-inflammatory effects of xanthone derivatives.
J Pharm Pharmacol. 1996 May;48(5):532-8. Lin CN, Chung MI, Liou SJ, Lee TH, Wang JP. School of Pharmacy, Kaohsiung Medical College, Taiwan, R.O.C.

The researchers studied 18 xanthone derived compounds and found that some of these compounds possessed strong anti-inflammatory properties.


Inhibition of cyclooxygenase and prostaglandin E2 synthesis by gamma-mangostin, a xanthone derivat ive in mangosteen, in C6 rat glioma cells.
Biochem Pharmacol. 2002 Jan 1;63(1):73-9. Nakatani K, Nakahata N, Arakawa T, Yasuda H, Ohizumi Y. Department of Pharmaceutical Molecular Biology, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, 980-8578, Sendai, Japan.

The fruit hull of mangosteen fruit, Garcinia mangostana L., has been used for many years as a medicine for treatment of skin infection, wounds, and diarrhea in Southeast Asia. In the present study, the investigators studied the effect of
gamma-mangostin, a xanthone contained in the mangosteen fruit, and showed it had a potent inhibitory activity of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) release.
Gamma-Mangostin inhibits inhibitor-kappaB kinase activity and decreases
lipopolysaccharide-induced cyclooxygenase-2 gene expression in C6 rat glioma cells.

Nakatani K, Yamakuni T, Kondo N, Arakawa T, Oosawa K, Shimura S, Inoue H,
Ohizumi Y. Mol Pharmacol. 2004 Sep;66(3):667-74.

We investigated the effect of gamma-mangostin purified from the fruit hull of the
medicinal plant Garcinia mangostana on spontaneous prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)) genase release and inducible cyclooxy-2 (COX-2) gene expression in C6 rat glioma cells.

An 18-h treatment with gamma-mangostin potently inhibited spontaneous PGE(2) release in a concentration-dependent manner with the IC(50) value of approximately 2 microM, without affecting the cell viability even at 30 microM. By immunoblotting and reversetranscription polymerase chain reaction, we showed that gamma-mangostin concentration-dependently inhibited lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced expression of COX-2 protein and its mRNA, but not those of constitutive COX-1 cyclooxygenase. These results suggest that gamma-mangostin directly inhibits IKK activity and thereby prevents COX-2 gene transcription, an NF-kappaB target gene, probably to decrease
the inflammatory agent-stimulated PGE(2) production in vivo, and is a new useful lead compound for anti-inflammatory drug development.