Fibromyalgia and Anatabloc?

I’ve just received an email:

Dr. Kirsch

Please watch this youtube video on a person with Fibromyalgia http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=StVre96Vzr8

Read some of the thousands of testimonials listed below. You could write for a hundred years and not cover everything going on with this.

This is write down your alley.

Regards
Adam

How did they know my email address? But let’s look at the component being advertised! “Anatabloc® is a supplement that contains 1 milligram of anatabine base, 500 units of Vitamin A and 40 units of Vitamin D3 in a single tablet.” – so we’re told on the homepage of anatabloc. “Anatabine is a naturally-occurring alkaloid, found in eggplant, peppers, green tomatoes, potatoes, and a variety of other plants and vegetables in the Solanaceae family.” OK, so it’s already in foodstuffs we eat every day. We don’t suffer from Vitamin A deficiency – on word of caution here, too much of Vitamin A is destructive to health! “Anatabine appears to deactivate a protein within the cell called NFkB.” Appears to – they aren’t even sure that the compound does what it should! Moreover fibromyalgia isn’t an inflammatory disease. Why work on inflammation that isn’t present to treat pain?

So, I’ve researched in PubMed for clues: ("anatabine" [Supplementary Concept]) AND "Chronic Pain"[Mesh] or ("anatabine" [Supplementary Concept]) AND "Fibromyalgia"[Mesh] didn’t yield any study! There are some studies like one on an experimental form of Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroiditis (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22807490) and another study of a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21958873). Nothing on chronic pain, on NFkB, or fibromyalgia.

So, what we’ve got? A video in which we’re told that someone has two nice daughters and suffers from chronic pain. That isn’t enough to support the idea that Anatabloc® is a remedy against fibromyalgia or other form of chronic pain.
Let’s have a look at costs. It wasn’t easy to look up costs. The basic form is 339 US$ for 2000 lozenges (whatever these are, I haven’t heard about lozenges before – tablets? Capsules?), which make it at 8 lozenges per day for someone weighing 68 kg (150 lbs) 1.36 US$ per day or 496 US$ per year. Quite expensive for a nutraceutical supplement.
I’d say, better save the money!

(I've just reread my own text not to leave in any spelling mistakes like in the email)

Addendum 17.03.2013:
I'm still pondering whether anatabine is a by-product of some other industrial processing of tobacco. http://www.whitecloudelectroniccigarettes.com/how-it-works/ecigarette-info/ingredient-guide/ shows the ingredients of electronic cigarettes liquids: propylene glycol, ethyl acetate, nicotine, water, flavoring, ethanol, malic acid, vanillin, acetylpyrazine, menthol, linalyl alcohol. What, if the producer of these liquids or the producers of nicotine plasters have loads of anatabine and look for an opportunity to sell this by-product, which is of no use for them? I'm just thinking.

Addendum 18.03.2013:
No, anatabine is produced according to a patented process: http://www.google.com/patents/US20120232115.
If an ingredient of tobacco alleviates pain one would think that smoking would improve fibromyalgia symptoms. It doesn't! Symptoms are worse in smokers. T.N. Weingarten an colleagues found, that "current tobacco use was associated with more severe fibromyalgia symptoms".  Link:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19158544. O.N. Pamuk and colleagues found that the severity of FM-related symptoms like chronic widespread pain and anxiety-depression scores were higher in smokers. Link:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19152091.
And you might check my blog: http://rheumatologe.blogspot.de/2011/11/fibromyalgia-and-smoking.html

Addendum 03.04.2013
During the past week I've received the following spam twice:

"Why don't you call" 1-555-555-5555 Extension 5 "and talk with the physicians???? This is a great news from my niece! On 3/27/13 (Saturday), one of nieces with her husband and 3-year old son visited my house. From her previous conversation with my wife, I knew she had some kind of chronic pains all over her body. So, when I saw her, I asked what kind of pain she was suffering from. She replied that the Doctor diagnosed her pain to be from Fibromyalgia and accordingly he prescribed medications (I didn't ask what medication). But she said that she doesn't feel any improvement and sometimes it becomes unbearable to her. I had Anatabloc on my dining table. I told her this Anatabloc helped me in many ways, including relief from back pain, knee pain sciatica nerve pain, arthritic pain. So, why not try it. Luckily I had both flavored and unflavored versions. I gave her to try the unflavored version first, which I bought for my wife because she doesn't like mint taste. My niece first felt a" ...

I don't prescribe medications against fibromyalgia as these don't work. But this text is fiction, the writer is surely working for the producers of Anatabloc. Did someone else receive such a comment?