Wormwood acts as a first line drug for malaria

What is wormwood(Qing Hao)?
Medicinally it mainly refers to the dried aerial part of Artemisia annua L. As a common type of wormwood in the family Compositae, Artemisia annua is native to temperate Asia and later introduced to every corner of the globe. Other names of this plant include annual wormwood, Herba Artemmisiae, sweet Annie, sweet wormwood, sweet sagewort, and so on. In China it is distributed in most areas of the country. It is harvested in summer and autumn when the flowers are going to bloom. After that, it needs to remove the old stems. And it is used fresh or dried in the shade. By the way, Artemisia japonica Thunb., another plant in the same genus, is also used as Qing Hao in some regions of China since it has similar efficacy. However, it can’t treat malaria. So, it is necessary to tell them apart medicinally.

Wormwood herb benefits
In Vol.3, Section 16 of Zhou Hou Bei Ji Fang (Emergency Prescriptions kept in one’s Sleeve), Ge Hong, the famous Taoist leader during the Eastern Jin Dynasty, ever briefly mentioned how to use wormwood plant to treat all cold or heat-induced malaria: "gather a handful of fresh wormwood plants, soak them with 2 liters of water, extract the juice by twisting, and drink it all." This is the earliest record about using Artemisia herb to cure malaria, not only in the medical history of Chinese but also the world.

And this brief comment turns out to be a great inspiration to the modern pharmacological studies. In 1971 researchers of Chinese Medicine Research Institute did find valuable clue when they red this text. And based on it they finally got on the right track and discovered the antimalarial drug artemisinin.

As the main active ingredient of Artemisia annua, artemisinin is poorly soluble in water and will decompose and lose efficacy above 60 degrees Celsius. In 1972 the effective monomer of artemisinin was successfully extracted with an organic solvent at low temperature. Artemisinin monomer is a highly effective, fast-acting antimalarial that is with low toxicity. This is completely different from drugs in chloroquine structure. And the rest is history.

In the field of basic biomedical research, the value and benefits of many important discoveries are not immediate. But a few of them are exceptional. The birth of them plays an immediate role on improving human health. And the discovery of antimalarial artemisinin, conducted by Tu Youyou and her colleagues, is one great example. Since the late 1990s, artemisinin, acting as a first-line drug for Malaria, has saved countless lives, among which most were children living in the poorest regions of the world.