New mescaline concentrations from 14 taxa/cultivars of Echinopsis spp. (Cactaceae) ("San Pedro") and their relevance to shamanic practice

Journal of Ethnopharmacology
Olabode OgunbodedeMartin Terry

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to determine in a procedurally uniform manner the mescaline concentrations in stem tissue of 14 taxa/cultivars of the subgenus Trichocereus of the genus Echinopsis (Cactaceae) and to evaluate the relationship (if any) between mescaline concentration and actual shamanic use of these plants. Columnar cacti of the genus Echinopsis, some of which are used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes by South American shamans in traditional medicine, were selected for analysis because they were vegetative clones of plants of documented geographic origin and/or because they were known to be used by practitioners of shamanism. Mescaline content of the cortical stem chlorenchyma of each cactus was determined by Soxhlet extraction with methanol, followed by acid-base extraction with water and dichloromethane, and high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC). By virtue of the consistent analytical procedures used, comparable alkaloid concentrations were obtained that facilitated the ranking of the various selected species and cultivars of Echinopsis, all of which exhibited positive mescaline contents. The range of mescaline concentrations across the 14 taxa/cultivars spanned two orders of magnitude, from 0.053% t...Continue Reading

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Citations

Mar 19, 2015·Progress in Neuro-psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry·Michael P Bogenschutz, Matthew W Johnson
Mar 31, 2015·Chembiochem : a European Journal of Chemical Biology·Teshome L AboyeUlf Göransson
Aug 30, 2012·Natural Product Reports·Warunya Arunotayanun, Simon Gibbons
Oct 16, 2018·Current Molecular Pharmacology·Ricardo Jorge Dinis-OliveiraDiana Dias da Silva
Sep 15, 2019·Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology·María Del Socorro Santos-Díaz, Nancy Gabriela Camarena-Rangel
Feb 20, 2019·Molecules : a Journal of Synthetic Chemistry and Natural Product Chemistry·Emmanuel Cabañas-GarcíaEugenio Pérez-Molphe Balch
May 31, 2018·ACS Chemical Neuroscience·Bruce K Cassels, Patricio Sáez-Briones

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