Artemisinin:
A new study has found that any place with heavy artemisinin use and favourable conditions could become a new hotspot for resistance, and that in some parts of Africa, the frequency of resistance markers is gradually increasing.
- It is an antimalarial drug derived from the sweet wormwood plant, Artemisia annua.
- The process involves drying the leaves and using a solvent to extract the active ingredient.
- Discovery of artemisinin’s therapeutic benefits in the 1970s was a breakthrough in malaria treatment.
- It offered a new option when the malaria parasite was becoming resistant to older drugs like chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine.
- Artemisinin is effective against all the malaria-causing protozoal organisms in the genus Plasmodium.
- It mainly targets the parasite during the blood stage, disrupting its ability to replicate within red blood cells.
- It helps significantly reduce the parasites but doesn’t stay in the body for a long time, being eliminated within hours.
- It is usually partnered with another drug that eliminates the remaining parasites over a longer period of time.
- The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) as the go-to treatment for Plasmodium falciparum malaria.
- Today, there are several derivatives of artemisinin, including artesunate and artemether, that are used in the treatment of malaria.
- Artesunate is highly effective at treating severe malaria as it is the only artemisinin derivative that can be given via intravenous injection
