Naturally acquired immunity to malaria is a known phenomenon. But little is known about the underlying mechanisms. The majority of adults in sub-Saharan Africa rarely experience overt disease, despite they have a population of parasites in their blood that could prove lethal to a malaria-naïve visitor. The use of Artemisia herbal medicine is spreading in many African countries, in schools, health centers. It was shown 10 years ago in Uganda that regular drinking of infusions from Artemisia plants had a strong prophylactic effect. We were of the belief that this prophylaxis was going to last for a few days, maybe a few weeks. Over the last 2 months we received several surprising inputs indicating that this prophylaxis was lasting for months, even years. But more recently several partners also report that when Artemisia infusions or capsules have been used during 7 days to cure a malaria infection, the people having used this short-term treatment also experience a long-lasting prophylaxis. The most interesting research lead is that specific IgEs induced by Artemisia consumption remain for months in the skin. In this review paper we present several hypotheses to explain this revolutionary property of Artemisia plants, and more particularly Artemisia afra used since generations in many African countries against tropical diseases.

Objective: The objective is to study in vivo the effect of the administration of Artemisia infusions as supplement in combination with the prescribed WHO treatment. Promising in vitro results needed to be confirmed in vivo before proceeding to larger scale clinical trials.Methods: A first pilot study was run with 5 patients using Artemisia afra infusions and a second one on 10 patients with Artemisia annua infusions. Over 15 days their fever, diurnal and nocturnal coughing, asthenia, Ziehl-Neelsen assay were monitored.Results: Artemisia afra infusions give faster symptoms resolution and healing. After 5 days all TB symptoms had disappeared whilst for Artemisia annua it took 10 days. The Ziehl-Neelsen assay was negative after 10 days for the Artemisia afra treatment and after 15 days for Artemisia annua. Conclusion:These observations on the administration of Artemisia infusions in combination with the conventional WHO treatment gave an astonishingly faster relief of the symptoms than conventional treatment alone. This could be a base to provide a potential natural and inexpensive therapy for TB treatment failure and resistance. More in vivo studies with a larger cohort are required to confirm our findings.