Honokiol as Ich Treatment?

acordova1331 · Dec 11, 2023

I wanted to see if anyone has any experience with this and if it is reef-safe. While researching for a school project, I stumbled upon an article and wondered if anyone has used this as an ich treatment?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10428556/

Jekyl · Dec 11, 2023

@Jay Hemdal

Sarcasm Included · Dec 11, 2023

The study was published in August, I wouldn't expect that their would be anyone implementing it.

These results suggest that the optimum treatment time for 1.0 μg/ml honokiol inducing C. irritans tomonts apoptosis-like death is 4 h. The inhibition rate of tomont hatching was 52.38% after treatment with 1.0 μg/ml honokiol for 4 h.

The study harvested the Tomonts and treated them in a sterile tank and had a optimum rate of only 52%. While it is great to see the reduction, in aquaria we wouldn't be harvesting (or we could just dispose of them and be done with it) so you would need to look at long term exposure side effects. It could end up working out great as a complimentary treatment to increase success rates and/or reduce treatment times.

I am really interested in Jay's thoughts.

Jay Hemdal · Dec 11, 2023

Sarcasm Included said:
The study was published in August, I wouldn't expect that their would be anyone implementing it.

The study harvested the Tomonts and treated them in a sterile tank and had a optimum rate of only 52%. While it is great to see the reduction, in aquaria we wouldn't be harvesting (or we could just dispose of them and be done with it) so you would need to look at long term exposure side effects. It could end up working out great as a complimentary treatment to increase success rates and/or reduce treatment times.

I am really interested in Jay's thoughts.

I've not heard of this paper. I gave it a quick skim just now. It is an in vitro study, so there is no ability to know if this will work outside of the testing wells that they used. Three issues I've seen with in vitro medications not making the translation to in vivo testing is: The drug ends up being toxic to the host. The material is too rapidly degraded in the environment to work well. Finally, as it seems to be here, the in vitro tests show a reduction of the pathogen by some percentage, but it really needs to be close to 100% in order to stop an aquarium infection.

Honokiol is one of the materials used in traditional Asian medicine. That does not always translate well to veterinary medicine since the animals do not benefit from the placebo effect (grin).

Jay