Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA – Kudzu, often reviled as “the vine that ate the South,” apparently brings something else to the table: a promising treatment for binge drinkers.

Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital outside Boston report that heavy drinkers who took a concentrated extract of kudzu root for only one week downed a lot less beer – two or three brews in an hour and a half instead of their usual five or six.

“That’s a pretty powerful response,” said Scott E. Lukas, director of the hospital’s drug-abuse research lab and lead author of the study, which appeared in this month’s issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Earlier kudzu studies have shown reduced consumption among alcohol-swilling monkeys, rats and hamsters. And while Lukas’ study is small and preliminary, it is the first to conclude what the Chinese have maintained for centuries: that compounds in the ancient vine, known as ge-gen, can help problem drinkers – human ones – imbibe less.

Researchers aren’t sure how it works, but Lukas suspects that active ingredients called isoflavones in the kudzu root increase blood flow, which helps alcohol get to the brain faster. This means drinkers “are getting cues that say, “I’m feeling good, I’m OK, no need to suck down this entire beer,”‘ he said.

Binge drinkers don’t usually pay attention to those cues. “They drink so darned fast, they don’t have the opportunity to perceive the effects of the alcohol,” Lukas said.

About 1 in 3 adult drinkers in the United States report binge drinking in the previous month, which some define as five or more drinks at one sitting for men and four or more for women, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

“It’s a huge public health problem in this country, one that continues into middle age and beyond,” said Dr. Robert D. Brewer, the CDC’s alcohol team leader, citing its role in car accidents, unwanted pregnancies and sexual assaults.

Brewer isn’t certain what practical applications the lab study may have. But if Lukas’ results are confirmed in future clinical trials, kudzu could be used – along with counseling – to get problem drinkers who want to change to drink less.

“There may be a lot of different strategies we haven’t thought of yet,” he said.

Lukas recruited 14 heavy drinkers – 11 men and three women, aged 21 to 32 – for his study, which was carried out in a specially designed studio apartment at the research lab.

“Many of our subjects told us, “I come home, relax an hour or two, catch a little TV, put my feet up,’ Lukas said, “so this was one of those scenarios.”

The apartment had a recliner, an entertainment center with a satellite TV, audio equipment, VCR/DVD and a supply of movies, as well as a refrigerator stocked with popular beers (Bud Lite or Miller Lite were favorites) and video cameras monitored by researchers in the next room.

In an initial 90-minute session, individual subjects were told to help themselves to anything in the fridge and to drink at their own pace. They could have up to six beers.

Afterwards, study subjects were given either a kudzu or placebo pill to take every day for a week, then told to return for more beer two weeks later.

After that session, those who were taking kudzu got a placebo and vice versa. They were told to take those pills for a week before returning for the final drinking session.

The study showed those who took kudzu drank an average of 1.8 beers per session compared to their original 3.5, while those on placebo drank the same as before. Kudzu subjects took 11 sips per 12-oz. can of beer, compared to the average of eight.

Unlike drug treatments for alcoholism, no side effects were reported from the kudzu. “Nothing,” Lukas said. “We were stunned.”

Lukas said he used a kudzu extract prepared in the lab because a chemical analysis showed that kudzu from health food stores did not contain the amount of active ingredients claimed on the label.

Chinese herbalists and consumers use kudzu for many things besides alcohol-related problems, such as migraines, upset stomach, fever and allergies. Adventurous cooks make kudzu jelly, chips, even wine and quiche.

When it was introduced to the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, its large leaves and grape-smelling purple flowers delighted all who saw it in the elaborate gardens of the Japanese pavilion.

By the 1920s, kudzu was being grown for animal forage in the United States, and in the decades to follow, the federal government promoted it for erosion control, paying farmers up to $8 an acre to fill their fields with it.

Perhaps too late, the hairy-stemmed vine with 8-inch leaves and mammoth roots was declared a noxious invader. In the South, kudzu has smothered millions of acres of forest and all else in its path, including bridges, buildings, signs, utility poles and cars.

Lukas has photographed kudzu-covered tractor-trailers and homes on Saint Simons Island, Ga., where his in-laws live.

Although the Southeastern climate is perfect for the so-called “mile-a-minute vine,” which can grow a foot a day and 60 feet a season, it also has been spotted in more northern areas.

Lukas learned about kudzu’s medicinal promise in 1992 when he went as a consultant to Japan to do drug-abuse testing.

He said it took three tries to get backing to study kudzu from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health, which funds more than 90 percent of the nation’s alcohol research.

“In this country, we don’t often embrace alternative things, which is too bad,” he said.

Raye Z. Litten, who oversees medications development for the NIAAA, said kudzu was the only herbal medicine being studied for alcohol. He suggested Lukas do a larger clinical trial, but called his early findings “exciting and promising.”