Ankylosing Spondylitis Treatments/Ideas

I'm researching ankylosing spondylitis for my friend.

I sort of looked things up awhile ago and then forgot to continue.

Today I didn't really pray very much at all but had the idea come to mind to look up Chinese roots. Just thought "roots" and then Chinese roots.

That's what came to my mind in the last few minutes. Then I was very happy to find a medical report open up for me when usually it's impossible for me to get access to the more wordy medical stuff. It's harder to read, or I have to read it more carefully, but there is so much information in them.

I first went to Chinese roots in general to familiarize myself or to see if anything stood out to me, from description or just word.

And then from there I typed in a word search and found that there are very new pilot research projects that have been done, using chinese roots to study the efficacy. Maybe not as a cure, but as an adjunctive remedy, given the cost of current treatments.

I'm still looking at things.

I focused on ideas like blood flow and inflammation and I'll write more, but ones that came to mind were/are being studied currently. The reports are pretty new, as of July 2010. Probably other things have been done earlier but this is what I'm finding.

So it's sort of interesting.

I first clicked on this link to get an idea of things:
http://www.itmonline.org/arts/herbintro.htm

Then I typed in a name of one of the roots in combination with the name of the disease and got this study:http://www.docstoc.com/docs/47286240/Traditional-Chinese-medicine-as-a-complementary-therapy-in---Ganoderma-Ext

So I was then comparing and contrasting ideas and looking a few things up on wiki and on angelica (sinensis vs. tuhou) and just some of the different properties in general.

When I look at this specific report, it's hard to know though, because the samples are so small. It would be easier to tell with more participants. I mean, if 50% report improvement and only 2 people completed with the study, and 1 noted improvement, that's still too small to tell what's really going on (in my opinion) but I suppose it gives a small idea as to whether any improvement is reported at all.

Danggui sounded like a possibility to me. I read it's also known as dong quai and also known as angelicae sinensis. It's referred to more commonly for women but I thought, in reading just a small bit about the profile, that it might be good for blood in general or for arthritis pain. Others are also mentioned for inflammation but I typed this one in first.

The other one which I thought sounded interesting was astralagus. But I haven't looked it up yet and some of the others also sound good.

I just found something that says a large research project will be taking place with Spain, U.S. and China for this disease.

I also looked up more about dong quai and it is supposed to have effectiveness with heart rhythm and also with platelets and sclerosis of some kinds, which may or may not be helpful for a condition that involves sclerosis (even if it's of tissue rather than maybe blood) and the heart link is possibly interesting.

I went to a couple of older articles to look at role of sex horomones in AS (acronymn for ankylosing spondylitis) but will have to stop here for now. Just curious about it, that's all.http://www.springerlink.com/content/w92266457513538m/

I'm looking at a few of the genes associated with AS. Gene ARTS-1 is an aminopeptidase which is thought to affect possibly blood pressure and hypertension. Mutations in this gene are thought to contribute to AS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARTS-1


Dong quai has been used for blood pressure so this would cause me to think it's still interesting.

Also,