Arthritis and other inflammatory diseases may someday be treated with medication containing a molecule from maple syrup, a preliminary new study finds.

Inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and some forms of osteoarthritis can be treated but such therapies carry side effects.

Now researchers in Quebec say they have demonstrated that a molecule known as quebecol could be the key to finding a new way to treat these diseases without incurring such problems.

The researchers demonstrated their finding by doing lab tests in which they took blood cells called macrophages and put them in with bacterial compounds. Ordinarily this would trigger an inflammatory response but when they used cultures containing quebecol this reaction did not occur, they said.

It is hoped this discovery could pave the way for a new class of anti-inflammatory treatments that would act with less side affects, the researchers said of their study, which was published in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters.