1 Neem in the News, January 08

Run a fast search for neem in the news and you’ll wonder how one tree could possible have that many uses. The first link is to a story in the Pittsburg Post Gazette about a spectacular Caribbean spa where a neem and aloe facial is part of a “relaxation to the extreme” vacation. Neem has been used as a beauty treatment women in Asia and Africa for thousands of years, so it’s interesting to see hand-made neem products included in an upscale resort.

Second is an update on neem in Nigeria where hundreds of thousands of neem trees are being planted in an economic development initiative. Neem, other stories have noted, is one of the few trees that grows in northern Nigeria and it is being used to reclaim lands that have been taken over the by the Sahara Desert – along with its multi-million dollar impact on foreign trade.

Another link takes you to PubMed, the online library run by the National Institutes of Health. A group of researchers in India have shown that neem may be the basis of a new immunotherapeutic protocol that helps prevent cancers from spreading. The really interesting thing about this study is that it is, to the best of our knowledge, the first in human beings.

This report follows up a long series of animal and lab studies indicating that neem also causes apoptosis – or programmed cell death – in animals. Neem or its isolated compounds have shown impressive efficacy against a wide variety of human cancer cell lines in test tubes, including colon, stomach, lung, live, skin, prostate and breast cancers. (For abstracts on these reports, visit www.PubMed.com and search for neem and cancer.)

Two more articles show just how versatile this plant can be. The Ministry of Natural Resources

Ministry of Natural Resources in Toronto has applied for emergency registration of azadirachtin, the active compound in neem, to treat the emerald ash borer, a voracious insect that is chewing its way through Ontario’s hardwood forests.

And the last report we’d like to highlight is a great column from the Providence Journal that calls neem a “just-about-perfect pesticide” for home gardeners, highlighting its ability to deter foliage-feeding critters without harming humans, other mammals, birds or beneficial insects.