Health & Fitness
WPI Professor Pioneers Use Of Dried Leaves To Treat Malaria
When the standard treatment didn't help to cure 18 people with Malaria in the congo, the physician applied a trial pioneered at WPI.
WORCESTER, MA—An attending physician in the Congro tried to help 18 critically ill patients struck with malaria with the standard treatment. It didn't work, so the physician used the "compassionate use" doctrine and tried a not-yet-approved malaria therapy made from dried leaves of the Artemisia annua plant. All of the patients recovered, making it a stunningly successful trial.
A WPI professor pioneered the use of these leaves in malaria therapy.
Details of the cases are documented in the paper “Artemisia annua dried leaf tablets treated malaria resistant to ACT and i.v. artesunate: case reports” by an international team lead by Pamela Weathers, PhD, professor of biology and biotechnology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), said the announcement.
“To our knowledge, this is the first report of dried-leaf Artemisia annua controlling ACT-resistant malaria in humans,” the authors of the Phytomedicine paper note, adding that more comprehensive clinical trials on patients with drug-resistant malaria are warranted, in the press release. “Successful treatment of all 18 ACT-resistant cases suggests that DLA should be rapidly incorporated into the antimalarial regimen for Africa,” they added, “and possibly wherever else ACT resistance has emerged.”
