Artemisinin from sweet wormwood treats not just malaria but also CANCER | 甜艾草中的青蒿素不僅可以治療瘧疾，還可以治療癌症

A unique category of antimalarial drugs known as artemisinins, or simply artemisinin, shows promise as a novel anti-cancer therapy.   A study published in the journal Pharmacology & Therapeutics indicates that repurposing drugs for other purposes, such as artemisinin for cancer, “can drastically fasten new therapeutic discovery, ensuring greater accessibility and affordability globally.”

“Cancer is a major cause of death globally and the majority of cancer leading to deaths occur in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) where conventional treatment options are often limited due to financial cost,” the study report claims.

As for artemisinins, they “have an excellent safety and tolerability profile as well as being affordable for deployment in Low and Middle Class Income Countries at around USD1 per daily dose. Robust, well designed clinical trials of artemisinin drug repurposing are indicated for a variety of different cancers and treatment settings.”

(Related: Artemisinin is also a remedy for malaria, several localized cases of which have emerged in Florida and Texas.)

Artemisinins are much safer and arguably much more effective than chemotherapy and radiation therapy which are damaging to healthy cells/tissues

Artemisinin was first isolated from sweet wormwood by eminent Chinese scientist Prof. Youyou Tu four decades ago who late won a Nobel Prize for her work on Artemisinins.  She discovered that artemisinin is a effective medication for treating malaria with an excellent safety profile.  The drug class is used globally to treat the disease.

Ever since, artemisinin and its derivatives have been explored for a series of health conditions including cancer.

“Artemisinins are a remarkable group of compounds that have shown promising cytotoxic effects against viruses, fungi and a variety of cancers as well as powerful anti-inflammatory effects in animal models of asthma, sepsis, arthritis, pancreatitis, systemic lupus erythematosus and haemorrhagic shock,” the researchers explain, citing a range of sources to back their use for each of these unique purposes.

Although being labeled as “drugs,” artemisinins are natural (not synthesized) because they are isolated and purified from sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua L.).  They represent a family of sesquiterpene trioxane compounds containing an active metabolite known as dihydroartemisinin, or DHA for short.

“Artesunate, artemether and arteether are derivatives of artemisinin that are wholly or partially converted into the active metabolite dihydroartemisinin (DHA),” the authors say in their report.

“Sweet wormwood (qinghao) has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years to treat fevers and a variety of inflammatory conditions. Humanity has probably wrestled with the life-threatening global epidemic of malaria since 770 BCE with a detailed description of symptoms of malaria described in the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, written around the time of the Chun Qiu and Qin Dynasties (770–207 B·C.).”

Renowned Chinese physician Ge Hong (284-363) listed qinghaosu as an essential remedy for fevers in the publication Emergency Prescriptions Kept up one’s Sleeve. He also wrote a treatise called “On Airs, Waters, and Places”in 400 B.C. when Hippocrates was describing “agues” and “tertian fevers” as frequently affecting people who lived close to swamps and marshlands where mosquitoes happen to live and breed.

Fast-forward to today and artemisinins are not only being used to treat malaria but also cancer.

“The antimalarial quinine was used in the early 20th century as an anti-arrhythmic agent to treat atrial fibrillation,” the study explains.

“Difluoromethylornithine (DFMO) which was originally developed as an anti-cancer therapy has been repurposed as a treatment for sleeping sickness. To date there are over 100 candidate drugs undergoing drug repurposing clinical trials for cancer.”

“An artemisinin drug repurposing programme for a number of cancer types, with a variety of clinical settings and combination therapies from pump priming window studies to Phase III clinical trials is urgently needed.”

Looking for more information about how to deal with cancer naturally? Visit CancerSolutions.news.

Sources for this article include:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

NaturalNews.com