Employees of the Laboratory of Medical Plants and Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Experimental Pharmacology of the Siberian Botanical Garden of Tomsk State University are exploring the features of a medicinal plant, Aconitum barbatum. It was determined that this plant has an anti-anxiety effect comparable to the effect of tranquilizers. Scientists of the Botanical Garden will create an artificial population of this plant, which will save a rare species and provide pharmacists with the raw material for creating a new antidepressant.
- Not every plant lends itself to introduction, meaning resettlement from the natural conditions to a place where it had not grown before, - says Tatiana Harina, an employee of the Siberian Botanical Garden. - It is important for us to create a high-grade raw material base so that the plant will not just take root and winter in a new environment–it is necessary to make it bloom and bear fruit in time, and what is the most important is to not change the therapeutic properties.
The results of the study of the anxiolytic activity of a substance contained in the Aconitum barbatum were published in Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine in 2015.