Yes / Ancient Chinese herbal texts as far back as the 4th Century Zhou hou bei ji fang
describe methods for the use of Qing Hao (Artemisia annua) for the treatment of
intermittent fevers. Today, the A. annua constituent artemisinin is an important
antimalarial drug and the herb itself is being grown and used locally for malaria treatment
although this practice is controversial. Here we show that the ancient Chinese methods that
involved either soaking, (followed by wringing) or pounding, (followed by squeezing) the
fresh herb are more effective in producing artemisinin-rich extracts than the usual current
method of preparing herbal teas from the dried herb. The concentrations of artemisinin in
the extracts was up to 20-fold higher than that in a herbal tea prepared from the dried herb,
but the amount of total artemisinin extracted by the Chinese methods was much less than
that removed in the herbal tea. While both extracts exhibited potent in vitro activities
against Plasmodium falciparum, only the pounded juice contained sufficient artemisinin to
suppress parasitaemia in P. berghei infected mice. The implications of these results are
discussed in the context of malaria treatment using A. annua infusions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/4539 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Wright, Colin W., Linley, Peter A., Brun, R., Wittlin, S., Hsu, E. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Published version |
| Rights | © 2010 MDPI. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk)., CC-BY-NC-ND |
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