Aloe vera has come of age.
The herbal remedy your grandmother grew in clay pots on her kitchen windowsill to ease the pain of red-ant bites and sunburn recently won Food and Drug Administration approval for human testing against the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.
Aloe juice and gel are used in hundreds of skin-care products, health drinks and ointments, and
an injectable form is approved for the treatment of cancer in cats and dogs.
Although much of the "proof" is anecdotal, some researchers call aloe a wonder drug. A study out of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center suggests the gel can stop immune system damage caused by sunburns, and a study at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston indicated it helps heal frostbite.
One major manufacturer claims $750 million in sales last year.
The slippery gel softens skin, eases pain, speeds the healing of burns and abrasions, increases energy, fades age spots, improves circulation and has many other nutritional and medical benefits that producers are not allowed to claim because they have not been scientifically proven, according to the International Aloe Science Council, which has headquarters in Fort Worth.
The Aloe Science Council works with the FDA and the Texas Department of Health to police the industry and make sure that any contaminated or highly diluted products that could give aloe a bad name are kept off the market.
"You have to put enough aloe in a product for it to work, but there's still some controversy over how much you need," said Gene Hale, executive coordinator of the council. "Many major cosmetic companies have maybe one-half of 1 percent in their products. Why? Because aloe sells."
Hale said most aloe experts believe a product needs to be 25 percent to 40 percent aloe to be efficient.
Cost restricts the amount of aloe contained in some products, but even in very high concentrations, aloe is virtually nontoxic when it is properly processed, proponents say.
"You can't drink too much aloe," Hale said. "Studies show the only way you can kill a rat with aloe is to drown him in it."
Unproven curative claims on some product labels, not toxicity, have caused the Food and Drug Administration to issue warnings and confiscate some products in the past.
Because proponents are forbidden to make medical claims for this succulent member of the lily family, a relative of the onion, many simply urge consumers to "try it."
It's a good tactic.
When Prevention magazine surveyed 5,000 readers on their favorite home remedies several years ago, more than 4,000 said they had tried aloe vera for soothing and healing minor burns. Of those who tried the ancient folk medicine, 87 percent reported "good" results, the best rating of any herbal remedy in the survey. Another 11 percent reported "fair" results.
Carrington Laboratories in the Dallas suburb of Irving is committed to the development of aloe vera as an FDA-approved pharmaceutical agent, a drug that someday will be used by mainstream medicine to treat cancers, ulcers and AIDS, among other maladies.
Acemannan, Carrington's trademarked name for the complex carbohydrate contained in aloe vera, was identified in 1984 and approved in 1991 by the Department of Agriculture for the treatment of fibrosarcoma, a kind of cancer, in cats and dogs.
"We are making therapeutic claims for Acemannan. It is a very powerful immune modulator," said Bill McAnalley, Ph.D., senior vice president of research at Carrington. "A lot of people sell aloe vera products with therapeutic claims, but the claims are not on the aloe itself."
McAnalley says aloe has direct anti-tumor and anti-viral properties and stimulates the immune system.
Carrington presented initial reports on Acemannan and a Canadian trial involving 60 AIDS patients at the Ninth International Conference on AIDS in Berlin, Germany, in June 1993.
In June of this year, the Food and Drug Administration gave Carrington approval to begin human trials in this country.
Carrington also is in the process of validating the first official test to determine which aloe products contain enough of the basic ingredient from aloe plants to call themselves aloe.
McAnalley said he has tested some so-called "aloe products" that contained no measurable aloe.
Too little aloe and poor processing that allowed some commercial products quickly to become inert or contaminated have cast a shadow on aloe's reputation at various times over the years.
The Aloe Science Council's Hale said that with better processing, the aloe business was gaining public confidence until a freeze in 1983 wiped out the U.S. supply of aloe vera plants from South Texas.
Some major manufacturers continued to produce more aloe products than ever, but they contained less and less aloe vera.
To protect the integrity of the aloe industry and to safeguard consumer interests, the International Aloe Science Council now has a certification process to regulate the manufacturing of aloe products.
Quality control becomes even more important as aloe moves from mostly cosmetic uses to more and more medicinal products with anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal properties, Hale said.
"The ultimate business for aloe is medicinal," he said. "In my opinion, we are going from cosmetics that make your hair shine and your skin soft to drinks that give you energy, to over-the-counter ointments and medications to pharmaceuticals."
Dr. Wendell Winters, associate professor of microbiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, has been researching aloe vera for 15 years, and authored the first major scientific paper on the plant in 1981.
"We think really of aloe as a pharmacy in a plant," said Winters, who heads the Phytobiology Research Department at UT San Antonio. "The time is now to do basic, perspective, controlled, randomized research."
Winters said researchers have identified a substance in aloe that causes cells to divide and multiply, stimulating the growth of white blood cells and other immune-function cells.
Among the 140 substances contained in aloe, Winters said, are several that reduce inflammation, along with some that promote growth and healing and some that inhibit them.
"We've found a bag of regulators in aloe," he said. "There's no question now that in vitro (in test tubes) we can regulate cell growth and promote artificial wound healing. We're studying additional factors that stop infection and inflammation."
Winters is looking at different species of aloe plants to determine whether those grown in other countries may be more appropriate for particular uses than those from South Texas and Mexico.
Winters said he believes aloe's anti-inflammatory and wound-healing properties will emerge as most important for future medical uses.
"The most exciting news about aloe is what it can do for the immune system," said Jesse Clarke Jr., president of the International Aloe Science Council. "In addition to its own activity, it is an excellent vehicle for other pharmacological agents because, as a carrier, it boosts response."
Clark's company, Miracle of Aloe, manufactures Miracle Foot Repair, which is 60 percent aloe and is sold by mail order only, to relieve dry, cracked and itching feet. He said the product was recently found to have a surprising beneficial side effect.
Elderly nursing home patients who rubbed their feet with Miracle Foot Repair reported they no longer were plagued by perpetually cold feet.
"We did a study with 90 nursing home patients and found that topically applied twice a day for five weeks, Miracle Foot Repair will improve blood circulation (as measured by laboratory tests) by 85 percent," Clark said. "These were people whose feet were always cold. They were becoming immobile because of poor circulation. We got some tremendous testimonials."
Last year, Miracle of Aloe hit $750 million in sales. For more information about the product, call (800) 966-2563.
Rex Maughan, an aloe pioneer and president of Forever Living Products, with its manufacturing plant in Garland, said his company has 3.5 million distributors selling 45 different products in 40 foreign countries.
"We make no health claims," Maughan told growers, processors and distributors of aloe vera plants and products attending the annual scientific seminar of the International Aloe Scientific Council in Irving on July 22-23.
"We sell aloe as natural vegetable juice," he said. "We just tell people to try it. You will feel better, have more energy, be more beautiful. We're helping people have a better lifestyle. There's a bigger market every day. We're just scratching the surface."
