A new study conducted by American researchers has found that dried and crushed leaves of the Artemisia plant are significantly more effective in combating malaria than the expensive medication derived from the plant. The study, which was conducted on mice, suggests that if the results can be replicated in humans, malaria therapy could become much cheaper and more effective. According to the World Health Organization, hundreds of millions of people worldwide are infected with malaria parasites of the Plasmodium genus, and at least 800,000 people died from the disease in 2009.
The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, compared the effectiveness of pure artemisinin with that of dried and crushed leaves of the Artemisia plant on mice infected with the Plasmodium parasite. The researchers found that the natural plant product killed significantly more parasites in a period of 12 to 72 hours than the pure artemisinin, despite having the same concentration of the active ingredient. The researchers suspect that there may be other compounds in the plant that are effective against the malaria parasite but have not yet been identified.
The current malaria medication is expensive and often needs to be combined with other drugs, making it unaffordable for many people in developing countries where malaria is most prevalent. The researchers hope that the discovery of the effectiveness of the Artemisia plant could provide an economic alternative for these countries. The plant can be grown in most climates, and the researchers believe that further studies will show whether the natural remedy is also effective against the human malaria parasite.
