"I'm not, I hope, relying on nomenclature, that is just part of the phenomena that seem to be indicating some relationship and similarity, "
It's hard to say what the relationship, if any, truly is. Evolution has an amazing capacity to make things of distant relationship converge towards similar behaviors but they still bear their differences. Quinolones and quinones aren't THAT different in that respect but still sufficiently so, that as that paper describes, their mechansims vary widely. Polyphenols are also topoisomerase inhibitors. Harmalines are topoisomerase inhibitors. Triterpenes... glycosides... most secondary plant metabolites are antimicrobial. These similarities shouldn't overshadow their differences however.
The fact that toxicity is so rare might suggest an idiosyncracy that has less to do with the chemical itself and more to do with the application. For example emodin is liver toxic only when combined with bacterial LPS. There are several vague suggestions of sensitization that i can't rule out but the most likely explanation is that, being an antibiotic, it merely contributed much more LPS to the pool than was intentionally introduced by the researchers. In other words, a sort of die-off that really has little to do with emodin and more to do with an unfortunate flood of endotoxins. I know in myself i nearly ruptured a tendon from cryptolepis from the die off alone. Even after the herxheimer retreated the damage took a while to heal. You say many people without Lyme have this effect, but the role of pathogens in chronic illness runs much deeper. Of course i'm not dismissing your suggested possibility either.
"what I was inferring was that, you are perhaps looking for a particular similarity or structure, which, while perhaps not there to be found, there may be some relationships, connection, or "similarity" between apparently differing structures that you're missing...and given the complexity of the compounds/structures involved, and their interactions with the complexities of the human body, that doesn't seem out of the question, as your quote above, also seems to indicate."
I am well aware of this and I hope you understand my point is not to say that there can't be a relationship but merely that there is not an obvious one to be speculated on. Maybe a computer model could predict it, but that would also require an understanding of how fluoroquinolones cause toxicity in the first place. When looking at these things the lack of similarity goes a long way... even minor chemical changes produce profoundly different effects... for example i used to eat designer drugs for a living. Which is all just a manipulation of structural activity relationships. Take your amino acid phenylalanine for example and decarboxylate it. You now have a neurotransmitter known as phenethylamine. A simple addition of one atom (alpha-methyl) gives you an amphetamine. The addition of a single fluorine in para-position of the aromatic ring turns your dopaminergic drug into something that dumps a lot of serotonin. The most conservative halide substitution you can make from a fluorine to a chlorine turns this mild entactogen into one of the most neurotoxic stimulants known to man. The addition of two methoxy groups at 2 and 5 positions of the aromatic ring obliterate this neurotoxicity and turn your amino acid turned neurotransmitter turned stimulant turned entactogen into a potent psychedelic drug that bears no biological relationship to any of the former despite an obvious chemical one.
"Nutramedix, the main suppliers of Samento appear to differ from your and Buhner's opinion regarding Quinovic acid."the latest generations of conventional synthetic antibiotics “Quinolones” are based on quinovic acid glycosides." "
Ahh.. the thing about
this is it's not an 'opinion' it is a reality. This confirms my suspicion that Cowden is a shill relying on sensationalism to sell his product. Sterol glycosides and quilolones are ENTIRELY unrelated. Quinones and quinolones have some mild similarity, quinovic acid and quinolones have none. Period. Now i need you to do me a favor and actually click these few links below so you can understand with your own eyes why this is a bogus claim. Don't be fooled by the ring structures. These are abundant in nature and in this case entirely different chemically, one being aromatic and one is not.
Quinovic acid: http://www.chemfaces.com/structural/Quinovic-acid-3-O-alpha-L-rhamnopyranoside-CFN99060.jpg
Quinolone: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Quinolone.svg/220px-Quinolone.svg.png
Steroid hormones: https://media1.britannica.com/eb-media/30/6530-004-798906B4.jpg
As i said it was probably named quinovic acid for historical reasons (ie being isolated from a plant that also was known for quinine production) than for biological ones. And again i'm not making the claim that they don't have some convergent biological function. As demonstrated above many compounds do. But the claim that quinolones are derived from quinovic acid is patently false. Chemically they are unrelated. Biologically, any relationship to my knowledge is not known.
Post Edited (Psilociraptor) : 6/8/2017 8:12:03 AM (GMT-6)