<i>Artemisia annua</i>: A New Version of a Traditional Tea under Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trial for the Treatment of Malaria

Abstract

Introduction: The traditional antimalarial tea Artemisia annua, indicated for centuries in China to treat fevers, is again arousing interest for the treatment of malaria due to improvements attained in the plant composition by a few Institutions throughout the world, including the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil, increasing its principal component by more than 100 times as from standard varieties, giving 1% in artemisinin and an expressive biomass yield such as 2 tons of dried leaves/hectare. Clinical trials carried out with this material in African countries have proven its therapeutic potential for a new generation of Artemisia tea in the treatment of falciparum malaria. In addition to artemisinin, recent studies have identified and quantified other compounds present in the crude extract and characterized their contributions to the anti-malarial efficacy, including their action against chloroquineresistant strains. The majority of the clinical trials carried out with Artemisia tea in African countries have shown that the control of the parasitaemia is efficient in the initial treatment period, but few trials have followed the patients up to the 28 th day.This first clinical trial carried out in Brazil with the A. annua infusion, after toxicological trials that defined the safety of this form of medication. Methods: The therapeutic efficacy of the tea was measured in patients with falciparum malaria over 28 days, comparing it with the current first-line treatment namely artemether-lumefantrine (Coartem®). The trial was carried out in controlled groups according to offi-How to cite this paper: de Magalhães, P.M., Figueira, G.M., de Souza, J.M., Ventura, A.M.R., de

Inhibition of Cysteine Proteases via Thiol-Michael Addition Explains the Anti-SARS-CoV-2 and Bioactive Properties of Arteannuin B

“…Artemisia annua is the plant source of artemisinin, an endoperoxide-containing sesquiterpenoid with potent antimalarial activity, , along with several artemisinin-related compounds and other natural products. − Due to its medicinal properties, many studies have focused on identifying other bioactive compounds from A. annua . Additional reports detail the value of A. annua leaf extracts to treat a wide variety of human diseases − including cancer , and HIV. , Recently, ethanolic and hot water extracts of A. annua containing artemisinin and dihydroartemisinic acid demonstrated in vitro activity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, though other potentially bioactive compounds in these extracts were not identified . A previous report also involved the extraction, isolation, and identification of compounds from high-yield artemisinin-producing and low-yield artemisinin-producing chemotypes of A. annua …”