Black pepper can treat skin diseases

Published on July 30, 2008 12:29 AM

Skin diseases are the diseases that can affect patients not only emotional but also psychological. Scientists have discovered that the compound that gives black pepper its spicy, pungent flavor may provide a new treatment for the skin condition vitiligo.

There are skins diseases that are highly visible, for example vitiligo. Vitiligo is a skin pigment condition where areas of the skin lose normal pigment color and turn white, leaving the skin spotty and patchy in color. White patches appear on the skin in different parts of the body. While vitiligo is more noticeable in people with darker skin, it can affect people of all races.

Health scientists showed that one in 100 people are affected with such a disease and while the most popular treatment for the disease is corticosteroids applied to the skin, less than 25% of patients respond successfully to the treatment.

A team of researchers from King’s College London, for to find a better treatment for vitiligo, took the compound that gives black pepper its spicy flavor – piperine – along with its synthetic derivatives, and applied it to the skin of mice. This was done alone and followed by ultra violet radiation (UVR).

The researchers found that when the skin was treated with a piperine compound, just four exposures of UV radiation were sufficient to significantly darken the skin. However when using UV radiation alone, more than 10 exposures were needed to produce a similar but less even effect.

In those patients treated with both a piperine compound and UV radiation, the results took longer to fade and did not disappear completely. By contrast, there was no remaining detectable pigmentation within the same timeframe for skin treated with UV radiation only.

Furthermore, when treatment was resumed, results were noticeably faster in the group treated with piperine.

Piperine was first discovered by Hans Christian Ørsted in 1819. Piperine is commercially available. It may be extracted from black pepper.

Scientists have not enough studies on black pepper to verify if it is overall healthful and beneficial, detrimental, or neither. Here are a few possible benefits of black pepper: alleviates hemorrhoid, gas, constipation. It also can improve digestion – just think, by grinding or shaking black pepper onto your meal, you may actually be aiding yourself in the digestion of that meal.

Black pepper stimulates the taste buds, alerting your stomach to increase its hydrochloric acid secretion which aids in digestion. Black pepper also can alleviate loss of appetite, promotes sweating, and promotes urination. It has an anti-bacterial effect, anti-oxidant effect.

These findings could potentially lead to the development of treatments that not only provide improved results, but could also reduce the need for UV radiation in vitiligo treatment, in turn lowering the risk of skin cancer.