The role of artemisinin

In medicine, various chemical elements are extracted and called different names, but people do not know their uses, so they think it has no significant effect on the disease, so people do not like to use it. In fact, artemisinin has a wide range of effects as long as people understand its uses.

Artemisinin is a sesquiterpene lactone drug with a peroxide group extracted from the stems and leaves of the plant Artemisia annua. Its effect on the ultrastructure of the erythrocytic stage of Plasmodium in mice is mainly the change of the membrane structure of the parasite. The drug first acts on the food vesicle membrane, surface membrane, mitochondria, and endoplasmic reticulum, and also has a certain effect on the chromatin in the nucleus.

This suggests that the main mode of action of artemisinin is to interfere with the function of the surface membrane-mitochondria. It is possible that artemisinin acts on the food vacuole membrane, thereby blocking the earliest stage of nutrient uptake, causing the malarial parasite to become starved for amino acids more quickly, rapidly forming autophagic vacuoles, and continuously excreting them from the parasite, causing the malarial parasite to lose a large amount of cytoplasm and die. The uptake of tritium-labeled isoleucine by Plasmodium falciparum cultured in vitro also showed that its initial mode of action may be the inhibition of protozoan protein synthesis.

Artemisinin is a chemical component extracted from the stems and leaves of Artemisia annua and is a natural product. Artemisia annua is very common in our daily life. "It is widely distributed and can generally be found in front of and behind Nanjing people's houses." Professor Duan said that the plant of Artemisia annua is called Artemisia annua, an annual plant with dark green color. "Both mugwort and Artemisia annua are plants of the Asteraceae family. They are similar in shape. Mugwort is gray-green, while Artemisia annua is dark green. They bloom in summer and autumn, and the flowers are very small. Youyang Artemisia annua is the main planting base of Artemisia annua in China."

The main uses of artemisinin

Anti-malarial

Artemisinin is the most popular antimalarial drug after pyrimethamine, chloroquine and primaquine. Especially for cerebral malaria and chloroquine-resistant malaria, artemisinin is rapid and low-toxic. It was once called "the only effective malaria treatment in the world" by the World Health Organization. Its anti-malarial mechanism of action is mainly that in the process of treating malaria, artemisinin is activated to produce free radicals. The free radicals combine with malarial proteins and act on the membrane structure of malarial parasites, causing the destruction of their vesicle membranes, nuclear membranes and plasma membranes, swelling of mitochondria, and shedding of inner and outer membranes, thereby damaging the cell structure and function of malarial parasites and affecting the chromatin in the cell nucleus to a certain extent. Artemisinin can also significantly reduce the intake of isoleucine by malarial parasites, thereby inhibiting the synthesis of parasite protein.

The antimalarial effect of artemisinin is related to different oxygen pressures. The higher the oxygen pressure, the lower the half effective concentration of artemisinin for Plasmodium falciparum cultured in vitro. Reactive oxygen can not only directly destroy malarial parasites, but also damage red blood cells, leading to the death of malarial parasites. In addition to its good killing effect on Plasmodium, Artemisia annua also has a certain inhibitory effect on other parasites. In the early 1980s, preliminary research by scientific researchers found that artemisinin has anti-schistosomiasis effects. Studies have confirmed that artemisinin can kill larval schistosomes throughout the entire period of taking the drug. Clinically, artemisinin and its derivatives have no particularly obvious adverse reactions in the treatment of malaria.