Synergy has become a popular word indicating that a whole entity is worth more than the sum of its parts. Investment bankers refer to synergy when company mergers result in a new company of a greater value than the sum of the values of the individual companies. A synergistic relationship occurs when two people create a greater contribution together than they would have independently.
What about medicines?
Cancers and infections are sometimes treated with complex drug combinations interacting with multiple targets to overcome the development of resistance against treatment. This is known as pharmacodynamic synergism, which, in some cases, allows for the use of lower doses of each drug and consequently less adverse effects.
Synergism also occurs when compounds increase the solubility, absorption, distribution or metabolism of other, active compounds, thereby increasing its bioavailability. This is called pharmacokinetic synergism.
In phytomedicines, synergy is used to explain why plant extracts offer advantages over single isolated compounds.
Synergistic interactions among the herbs in Chinese herbal medicines are believed to enhance the bioavailability of active components, promote therapeutic effects, and/or reduce toxicity.
However, molecular pharmacological interactions, such as synergy are complicated in nature and must be verified through detailed investigations, applying mathematical rules. These investigations require a quantitative approach which usually starts with each individual compound’s dose-effect curve.
Botanical extracts may contain hundreds or thousands of compounds at varying abundance and the mere identification of these compounds represents a significant challenge. Also, the biological activities of a botanical extract not only result from compounds with synergistic activity, but may also be influenced by additive or antagonistic activities of other compounds present in the extract.
Botanical extracts are becoming increasing important in numerous therapeutic areas and they also provide much needed lead compounds. However, to establish that 1+1 is indeed 3, complex methodology is required.
In short, before reference is made to synergy in botanical extracts it has to be verified, and that is an ambitious task.
