PHA-Exchange> Chinese Herbal Drug Artemisinin Widely Embraced in Treating Resistant Malaria

[George Lessard]

Herbal Drug Widely Embraced in Treating Resistant Malaria
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

World health agencies are racing to acquire 100 million doses of a 
Chinese herbal drug that has proved effective against malaria.

(Full story @ but requires free registration)

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/health/10MALA.html?th>
Google results about 16,500 for artemisinin .
<http://www.google.com/search?q=artemisinin&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8>

[Excerpts]

The drug, artemisinin (pronounced are-TEM-is-in-in), is a compound 
based on qinghaosu, or sweet wormwood. First isolated in 1965 by 
Chinese military researchers, it cut the death rate by 97 percent in 
a malaria epidemic in Vietnam in the early 1990's.

It is rapidly replacing quinine derivatives and later drugs against 
which the disease has evolved into resistant strains.

To protect artemisinin from the same fate, it will be given as part 
of multidrug cocktails.

Until recently, big donors like the United States and Britain had 
opposed its use on a wide scale, saying it was too expensive, had not 
been tested enough on children and was not needed in areas where 
other malaria drugs still worked.

Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, which procures drugs for 
the world's poorest countries, opposed its use during an Ethiopian 
epidemic last year, saying that there was too little supply and that 
switching drugs in mid-outbreak would cause confusion.

But now almost all donors, Unicef and the World Bank have embraced 
the drug. The new Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has 
given 11 countries grants to buy artemisinin and has instructed 34 
others to drop requests for two older drugs - chloroquine and 
sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine - and switch to the new one. ...

.... Like many tropical disease drugs, artemisinin is a fruit of 
military research. Chinese scientists first isolated it in 1965 while 
seeking a new antimalarial treatment for Vietnamese troops fighting 
American forces, said Dr. Nelson Tan, medical director of Holley 
Pharmaceuticals, which makes the drug in Chongqing, China. ...

... Artemisinin, which has no significant side effects, quickly 
reduces fevers and rapidly lowers blood-parasite levels, which can 
keep small outbreaks in mosquito-infested areas from becoming 
epidemics. ...

... The price of artemisinin cocktails has fallen from $2 per 
treatment to 90 cents or less as more companies in China, India and 
Vietnam have begun making them. (Older drugs cost only 20 cents.) 
Novartis, the Swiss drug giant, sells its artemisinin-lumefantrine 
mix, Coartem, to poor countries for 10 cents less than it costs to 
make, a company official said. The same drug, under the name Riamet, 
is sold to European travelers for about $20. ...

... Though it grows wild even in the United States, wormwood is 
cultivated only in China, Vietnam and pilot projects in Tanzania and 
India. It is planted in December and needs eight months to mature. 
Drug companies want firm orders from donors before they try to triple 
production. ...