<i>Echinacea</i> -Induced Macrophage Activation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Public interest in Echinacea is growing rapidly. Unfortunately, there is little scientific evidence to support claims of efficacy of this widely used botanical, and little information about potential mechanism of action. This study examines the ability of Echinacea to upregulate macrophage function and begins to elucidate the mechanism of Echinacea-induced macrophage activation. Murine peritoneal macrophages were cultured with E. purpurea extracts enriched for plant polysaccharide (EP). ELISA was used to measure cytokine production. MAPKs were blocked using specific inhibitors, and Western blotting used to identify phosphorylated proteins involved in signal transduction. To examine in vivo efficacy, EP was administered orally and Listeria monocytogenes given i.v. Mice were sacrificed three days post-infection to determine bacterial load in the spleen. We demonstrate that an endotoxin-free EP extract activates the innate immune response, stimulating production of IL-6, TNF, IL-12, and NO from macrophages in vitro. Along with evidence of enhanced macrophage function, we found that oral EP reduces bacterial burden during infection by Listeria monocytogenes, demonstrating its efficacy in vivo. EP initiates a signaling cascade within macrophages through both TLR4-dependent and -independent mechanisms, involving ERK, p38 and JNK, and ultimately the activation of NF-kappaB.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".