Talk:Artemisinin/Archive 1

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Zoe Boudart.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2019 and 23 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yliu3089. Peer reviewers: Timmyhuanghe.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Comment
I have merged the contents of Artemisinin and malaria to this article and in lesser extent to Artemisia annua. I don't know much about this topic and didn't verify anything from external sources, so it would be nice if some MD Wikipedian would continue from here. jni 06:41, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Copyright infringement in article
I just by chance noticed that sentences in the first part of the 'Politics' section were copied from a '98 BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/194160.stm Trefalcon (talk) 21:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Please, specify or, even better, remedy it by rephrasing those sentences and adding an inline reference to the BBC. JoJan (talk) 14:40, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Used since when?
I replaced the sentence "Artemisinin has been used in traditional Chinese medicine since 340s for the treatment of fever." with a better worded, but apparently less precise sentence from the Artemisinin article. Unfortunately, it isn't clear where the date comes from; it was merged from the old Artemisisin and malaria article which has been deleted since, so we have no history. &mdash; Sebastian (talk) 02:52, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

I added details of a recent study that uncovered the mode of action of artemisinin using a yeast model. - Anon

Interestingly, since this paper was a seminal paper, there are not too many references. There are totally only 11 references and seven of them were from Chinese ancient medical literature, since Dr. Tu said that her idea on this research was actually sparked by ancient Chinese medical theory. Ancient literatures that are cited by Dr. Tu were finished between A.D. 200 to A.D. 1800. It was recorded that people in ancient China had started to use plants that contain Qinghaosu to treat malaria.Also, all those cited literatures are available nowadays since they were reprinted by official priting houses in the recent years. -Yliu3089 (talk) 15:23, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

I am not widely familiar with the use of artemisinin compounds for malaria, but the New England Journal has carried reports of seizures with its use and when compared to intravenous quinine for the treatment of severe malaria (that is, patients in coma or otherwise requiring ICU-level care), artemether clears the malarial parasites from the blood just as quickly, but patients remain comatose longer than those treated with quinine and had a higher rate of acute lung injury, with similar overall mortality and morbitity rates in the two groups. (Free text with complete citations: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/335/25/1922?hits=20&andorexactfulltext=and&where=fulltext&searchterm=artemether&search_tab=articles&sortspec=Score%2Bdesc%2BPUBDATE_SORTDATE%2Bdesc&sendit=GO&excludeflag=TWEEK_element&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT). That being said, artemisinin compounds such as artemether are the drugs of choice for severe malaria in whenever quinine resistance has been reported (South Asia) or when quinine is unavailable--but that doesn't make them "best ever."

More recent data could, of course, prove me wrong. Matdaddy 02:20, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation
How is Artemisinin pronounced? Particularly, where does the stress go?
 * I've added the pronunciation to the intro (IPA per WP:MOS). Hope that helps. -Techelf 12:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

How it works
Since I am a layman, it is difficult to read the text in the subchapter "How it works" but what I can discern is that there are several things mentioned that do not directly correlate to each other. The subchapter needs to be rewritten.

Link

 * Selective toxicity of dihydroartemisinin and holotransferrin toward human breast cancer cells 2001, pdf, 134 kb

Different pages
Can we have different drug pages for artesunate and artemether instead of a re-direct, please? Any objections? --Gak 19:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Artemether longer acting than artemisinin
The article states: "Because artemisinin itself has physical properties such as poor bioavailability that limit its effectiveness, semi-synthetic derivatives of artemisinin, including artemether and artesunate, have been developed. However, their activity is not long lasting, with significant decreases in effectiveness after one to two hours."

I'm not sure exactly how the second sentence is supposed to be read. However, if it is intended to mean that both artesunate and artemether are shorter acting than artemisinin, then it is only half-right. From what I have read, while artesunate has a shorter half-life ( < 1 hour) than artemisinin (2-5 hours), artemether has a substantially longer half-life (3-11 hours) than either of the other two compounds. For instance, see: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=2488974 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.101.193.186 (talk) 08:29, 10 January 2007 (UTC).

History
The writing is somewhat confusing. Let me explain. The article mentions that the compound was mentioned in a booklet of prescriptions. But then later, we learn that Tu Youyou found it in a shrub. This seems to imply that the original source was NOT in the shrub but somewhere else. an answer: an ingredient can appear in an recipe, the mentioned booklet is probably a book containing recipes for making medicine to cure certain illnesses. Especially in chinese, when an ingredient is discribed (plant named x looks green, leaves look pointy for example), it doesn't mean that you have actually found/discovered it. the mention of finding the shrub probably denotes the recorded actual finding of the working ingredient. (in this case wormwood, and it is recorded not all types of wormwood contain the active ingredient, so you can imagine the happy finding of one that works!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pakmenu131.111.229.56 (talk) 11:37, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion concerning factual risk of parasites developing resistance to Artemisinin
Against other malaria medicines resistance among parasites emerged in an average timeframe of 7 years. (not sure, think this is what i read) Since Artemisinin based drugs have been recorded to be used for 1600 years in the use against malaria, and has been used on large scale to combat malaria in China since the 1970's, I question the likelihood of resistance developing against this drug, as stated by the WHO.

Historically it seems rather unlikely that resistance would develop right now, but also for simple logical reasons the likelihood is very small:

As the drug only remains about an hour in the bloodstream the difficulty in getting resistant to the drug by the parasites lies in the fact that the body excretes the Artemisinin and after 30minutes most of it has left the bloodsteam. This means no time for the parasites to develop resistance, they die or not, but they do not continuously live in an Artemisinin environment unless in vitro, and it is these experiments that should be forbidden, not the normal use of a single cure of Artemisinin, which leaves your body free of 95% of the parasites, and dissapears from your system in an hour or two. I have not specifically looked up the halflife of other malaria drugs, but i remember they remain present in the bloodstream for 1-3weeks as opposed to the hour or so of Artemisinin.

Could it be this is the reason the parasites have not developed resistance yet after so much time of the drug being used?

i read this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8072742.stm from http://www.malariasite.com/MALARIA/artemisinin.htm but as you maybe note the article is about Artesunate and not Artemisinin (see longer half life of Artesunate). Safer would be to use Artemisinin once (kills 95% of parasites) and then leave the rest of the parasites to your imune system that is actually capable of handeling a limited number of parasites. (the problem is when they arise they multiply too fast)

If the WHO or anyone has proof of resistance developing among parasites in real live people against Artemisinin we should know about it. If not, there is actually not much logical reasons for this fear the WHO is inducing. It seems the pharmaceutical industry has been demoting use of this cheap and effective drug for obvious reasons of profit loss.

NB: I am a european living in China, and i have been able to buy the Artemisinin based drug in Yunnan for exactly 10RMB = 1EUR for a complete set of pills for one cure. --Pakmenu (talk) 14:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pakmenu (talk • contribs) 13:51, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * TCM use of Artemsinin was never big enough to make mutations which give resistance to it enough of a survival advantage to become common. To be honest, the traditional use of the drug was pretty much worthless anyway, unmodified artemisinin has poor bioavailability and most doses taken would have been subpotent.  Artemisinin is also bad at parasite clearance: the monotherapy is an excellent treatment but a lousy cure, which is why it's always paired with another slower acting drug to "clean up."  This incomplete treatment from monotherapies simply begs for resistance to develop, like a patient taking two days of a five day course of antibiotics.


 * It's sad but true that most countries in the world do not use ACT's as a first-line cure because they're too expensive at a few dollars for each treatment. They tend to be manufactured "at cost" which is actually fairly high since it's a multi-drug pill and the artemisinin component has a dismal supply chain.  Mefloquine is cheaper, simpler to make, and (resistance aside) just as effective.  No one makes money treating malaria, so the man isn't keeping artemisinin down, the science and the economics are. SDY (talk) 09:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Legal Status
For many years, access to the purified drug and the plant it was extracted from were restricted by the Chinese government. It was not until the late 1970s and early 80s that news of the discovery reached scientists outside China. The World Health Organisation (WHO) tried to contact Chinese scientists and officials to find out more, but drew a blank. Dr Ying Lee, one of the scientists involved in the research into artemisinin, said the Chinese distrusted the West. The Chinese suspected the West just wanted to exploit the drug and sell it around the world slightly altered and repatented. The fact that there were several Americans on the WHO's steering board on malaria and that some were from the military did not help clear the distrust. It can be noted Americans had just invested a lot into mefloquine, an analogue of chloroquine.
 * This has nothing to do with Artemisinin's legal Status at all why is this labeled the way it is. The Legal Status section should be relabeled or change to fit the title of the section.

66.66.4.198 (talk) 00:34, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

what is oxidative work up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.201.103.193 (talk) 16:32, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

configuration at C3
shouldn't that peroxide bridge be beta "up" at C3 making the CH3 alpha "down" as drawn? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.247.244.187 (talk) 02:29, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Artemisinins are prodrugs
I added a concise sentence to the pharmacology section, which I find relevant since all artemisinins used therapeutically today are prodrugs. In fact, they are excellent examples for prodrugs. I know previous entries already were pointing at these facts, but a link to "prodrugs" and at which stage of Plasmodium infection the artemisinins are active, are worth mentioning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.62.47.252 (talk) 16:44, 11 February 2011 (UTC)