Bioresource as ‘MEDICINES’

Urna Banerjee

Health is wealth. If sustained in a proper way, it provides the adequate energy for continuing the everyday tasks of our daily lives. As being a warm-blooded highest level of vertebrate, though the role of environmental factors is extremely freak on influencing negative effect on our system’s physiology, yet for the sake of holding an important constituent of environment, the prominent environmental factors can indirectly bring about deleterious effect to our health through altering the physico-chemical characteristics of the three components of our surroundings – land, water and soil. Causing an acute pollution in these three are the principal causes of this. Examples can be cited as – i. altering the normal proportion of the constituent gaseous elements in the atmosphere due to excessive emergence of smog from vehicle; ii. altering nutrient levels as well as D.O. levels in the water bodies including the inland swamps caused by the discharge of industrial or municipal wastewaters into it; iii. repeated vegetations of any particular crops in a definite land therefore, making the land infertile. Additional sources including constructing urban architects, dumping of untreated wastes etc. Applications of illegal or band chemical or fertilizers in the farmed crops in order to make it market ready within a minimal time period or to protect it from harmful pests also add up to this situation. But unfortunately, all of these pose an adverse consequence to the farmed crops through multiple ways viz., affecting the human health through uptake of contaminated vegetables and other processed food items prepared from the farmed ingredients, accumulation of contaminants in the drinking water via water supply system through urban water supply infrastructure made up by an interconnected system of pipes, pumps, and other infrastructure largely. Although the pollution threats are extremely lesser in countries like – Austria, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and New Zealand, the same are highly alarming for many others in which India ranks third after Bangladesh and Pakistan as of 2023. Advent of medicines lies in the context of restricting the deterioration of the adverse issues that are indirectly caused by the negative influences of the environmental components greatly. 

Involvement of bioresources in ‘medicine’ including the working principles of medicines in short

In simpler terms medicines are defined as ‘science (of pathology) that are interrelated with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the various illnesses of humans for which they are intended to’. However, their mode of action remains universal for all which are normally ingested in the form of tables, capsules, powders or granules (Fig. 3). Although the major cons of these medicines still entails for their containments of significant chemical substituents having high shelf life due to which the rate of accumulation of the same remains high which the different parts of the digestive organs of human, the general classification though can roughly be made by considering their levels of side effects caused to the human physiology, the main pathways that they adhere for proliferating their step of actions are either pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics (Fig. 4) etc., that is reviewing the process of their interaction with the human systems in terms of their levels of biochemical ingredients depending upon the biological process of the organisms and size, weight and duration respectively. This simple lock and key interaction, that is binding of the nutrients with the specific  locus (active sites) which may undergo mutation due to impact of – i. disturbed food patterns, ii. environmental disruptions, iii. side effects caused by foreign toxic particulates within the physiology, may be used to heal up different health diseases of humans especially if their side effects are totally ignored by using only bioresources especially to those patients whose rates are much higher in Asian contexts. Inclusion of these type of resources are now highly recommended for those especially 80% percent of women in the world out of which only 30% women are categorized as post-menopausal population suffering from osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, as of surveyed by WHO in the year 2023. The instanteous example of such resource is the de-oiled pulverized mass of fish bone and fish vertebral skeletal structures which asides using in fish feed can effectively use in medicinal products for the sake of their moderately high contents (20gm per kg; although this value subjected to variation along with categorization of fishes like oily fish, fat and lean fishes) of calcium in those areas of fish. Besides, on an average a single human vertebra contains 1kg of calcium (which is equivalent to 99%). Alternatively, the highest source of calcium possibly is fetched from seafood (marine fishes) and they can be used as for an example canned fishery products like canned sardines in comparison to the other terrestrial products that has high calcium contents in it (Fig. 2). In this connection it may be stated that, nowadays there are a handful of such companies which have come forward with their readymade calcium powders (Fig. 1). Besides this, occasionally, some flavonoids present in plants as secondary metabolites exhibit medicinal characteristics having antioxidant, anti-cancer properties and many more. 

Fig. 1. Fish bone calcium powders [Source: thuocviet.net]

Fig. 2. Calcium contents in foods (source: International Osteoporosis Foundation)

Though the visionary objective of medicines exactly coincides with another selective food items, typically regarded as ‘supplementary intakes’ – the primary motive of two are complete with these following objectives – the first one aims at reviving the human health from the unhealthy conditions to healthier one while the second one restricts the health to worse down in future cases and does not follow any strict course. This is however true for all the two classes of medicines that is homeopathy and allopathy in which the resemblance of the biomedicines may occur for the second class of it, as because, instead of interfering with the target cells the later ones try to give a promising support to the entire body thereby eliminating its side effects to almost zero in contrast to the first ones, which readily targets the affected parts to execute their actions. Likewise, the names of deleterious medicines (both homeopath and allopath) showing vigorous side effects are given hereby.

Fig. 4. Process of interaction of medicines (drugs) with human body) [Source: mavink.com]

Human health and disease always go hand in hand with one another where, one sustains only at a single time in correspondence with an intervening factor called ‘environment’. In this, perhaps, ‘medicines’ acts as a mediating factor. But, this intervention of medicines despite of offering an satisfactory relief to the human illnesses like – misfunctioning of GI system, disruptions of sensory organs, disruptions in the smooth circulations of RBCs, improper rhythmic synchronizations in the cardiovascular systems and many such, they are subdue an additional package of never-absorbing accumulates in the body, potentially developing an allergic condition in the body along with the others – the most familiar of which in India is ulcers and stones. Some of the common examples in such lists are – a. olanzapine (Zyprexa), b. quetiapine (Seroquel), c. haloperidol (Haldol), d. zolpidem (Ambien), e. eszopiclone (Lunesta), f. clonazepam (Klonopin), g. lorazepam (Ativan), h. ropinirole (Requip) etc., causing hallucinations and nervous breakdown in severe cases. Following these highly fatal issues, there are about 156 banned medicinal drugs declared by FDC of Government of India on August, 21, 2024 completely were mainly of antibiotics, painkillers, medications, multivitamins etc. But fortunately, there is a high scope of getting rid of such ailments as our mother nation, unlike the others, with pool of diversified resources where one such resource is none other than fishes especially the marine ones for the virtue of the presence of 70% water in our Earth. Such resources, many of them still unexploited, if explored to the fullest can come up with two – i. enrichment of the fishery’s taxonomic knowledge, ii. increasing the superiority of human health by referring medicine as ‘friends’, iii. reducing the negative health impact of humans and, iv. reflecting a mild source of employment of the young youths by blueprinting this plan into industrialization etc. Owing to the cases of 56% ADR (adverse drug reactions) affected patients, now is being a high time for India to uptake such endeavour into actions so that it can serve for both the above actions fruitfully in its near future.

Author’s biography

Ms Urna Banerjee is a passionate writer who had completed her master’s degree in Fisheries Science after which she had been engaged extensively in contributing several articles in famous literatures both nationally and internationally.