Therapeutic potential of artemisinin and its derivatives in managing kidney diseases

Abstract

Artemisinin, an antimalarial traditional Chinese herb, is isolated from Artemisia annua. L, and has shown fewer side effects. Several pieces of evidence have demonstrated that artemisinin and its derivatives exhibited therapeutic effects on diseases like malaria, cancer, immune disorders, and inflammatory diseases. Additionally, the antimalarial drugs demonstrated antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, regulating the immune system and autophagy and modulating glycolipid metabolism properties, suggesting an alternative for managing kidney disease. This review assessed the pharmacological activities of artemisinin. It summarized the critical outcomes and probable mechanism of artemisinins in treating kidney diseases, including inflammatory, oxidative stress, autophagy, mitochondrial homeostasis, endoplasmic reticulum stress, glycolipid metabolism, insulin resistance, diabetic nephropathy, lupus nephritis, membranous nephropathy, IgA nephropathy, and acute kidney injury, suggesting the therapeutic potential of artemisinin and its derivatives in managing kidney diseases, especially the podocyte-associated kidney diseases.

Therapeutic potential of dihydroartemisinin in mitigating radiation‐induced lung injury: Inhibition of ferroptosis through Nrf2/HO‐1 pathways in mice

“…Some studies have found that artemisinin has some toxicity, 38 so is DHA, a derivative of artemisinin, to be toxic as well? DHA has been reported to treat kidney disease, 39 but at the same time this author suggests that it is not clear whether it has other toxicities if used in long‐term, low‐dose therapy. These need to be explored in more studies to confirm the safety of DHA.…”

The signaling pathways of selected traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions and their metabolites in the treatment of diabetic cardiomyopathy: a review

“…These results suggested that AG has the potential to treat DCM by reducing inflammation and oxidative stress, and its mechanism may be related to NF-κB and NOXs/Nrf2 signaling pathways. Artemisinin and allicin (AA) have anticancer, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory biological activities ( Zhou et al, 2022 ; Jin et al, 2023 ) and have been proved to be used in clinical anti-myocardial fibrosis ( Kong et al, 2023a ). Kong et al (2023a) found that the cardiac function of STZ-induced diabetic rats was damaged, and AA could improve these damages.…”

Engineered extracellular vesicle-encapsulated CHIP as novel nanotherapeutics for treatment of renal fibrosis

“…Numerous studies have reported that Smad2/3 positively regulates cell fibrosis-like change and inflammation in renal interstitial fibrosis 6 , 7 . In addition, expression of Smad2/3 in the nucleus can aggregates in the renal tubular cell and accelerate CKD progression 8 , 9 . Therefore, the key to anti-fibrosis is to regulate the expression of Smad2/3 protein.…”