I grew up in a South African community far removed from orthodox medical care. Folk remedies based on plants and herbs were used to treat whatever ailed the family.
In 1958, I witnessed the dramatic recovery of an old man from a possibly fatal illness after he was treated with an herbal extract. That event finally convinced me that plants contained some secret elixir, which had not been discovered by man. It also prompted me to embark on research which was to continue for the next forty years.
In 1968, after ten years of private research when I treated family and friends, I founded Essential Sterolin Products (ESP) to continue research on a formal basis. Prof. Karl Pegel of the University of Natal in Durban and his assistant Engela de Witt were the first scientists sponsored to work for ESP. Their goal was to isolate the elusive, active compound in the plant that was responsible for the remarkable cure I had witnessed ten years previously.
Prof. Pegel and his team were able to extract a fatty substance which was identified as sitosterol by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Sitosterol had been identified as early as 1922 and was used in large doses to block the absorption of dietary cholesterol. Apart from that, it appeared to have no proven significant biological activity. Nonetheless, Prof. Pegel's group continued their work and discovered that in their efforts to isolate the sterol, they had destroyed the most important compound - the sterolin.
The research team proceeded to develop a product that contained sterols and sterolins in the same ratio as found in the original herbal extract. Their work led to the release in 1974 of Harzol® - a patented remedy for benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH). ESP started exporting this product to Germany where it has been prescribed to hundreds of thousands of BPH patients over the past 25 years. Harzol® was a product of Hoyer &Co. in Germany.
The income generated by the export of Harzol® enabled ESP to invest more than 5 million dollars in sponsoring research in South Africa, Europe and the USA. Studies focused on the immune modulating properties of sterols and sterolins and eventually resulted in the patented product called Moducare®. This research has been published in international scientific journals and we hold several international patents. ESP continues to sponsor research programs driven by the conviction that the human immune system holds the key to overall health. The success of ongoing clinical trials confirms our faith that the combination of plant sterols and sterolins found in Moducare® is extremely valuable in the management of many diseases.
I trust that you will find the information on this website useful and that you will support our efforts to help more people benefit from an affordable treatment that can keep their natural resistance functioning optimally and can enable them to live normal lives.
R.W. Liebenberg
