Artemisia tea
1. Using artemisia tea has the advantage that each country can produce and use its own anti-malarial with Artemisia annua. Scientific results have shown that the artemisinin content in the blood is high enough after drinking artemisia tea. We quote: “… the minimum concentration required for growth inhibition of P. falciparum can clearly be exceeded with the Artemisia preparations” (Mueller, M.S. et al, Randomized controlled trial of a traditional preparation of Artemisia annua L. in the treatment of Malaria, Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (2004), 98, 318-321).
2. The anti-malarial activity of artemisia tea is much stronger than the same quantity of isolated artemisinin, and this is clearly due to the other anti-malaria components within the tea. When artemisinin is extracted for the production of pharmaceuticals, this is considered to be a process of “purification”. Rather than being purification, it is more like “poorification”! In fact the components that are discarded are not “impurities” but extremely valuable anti-malarial substances. From the same number of Artemisia annua plants, many more people can be trated for malaria with artemisia tea, than if those plants are used for the extraction of artemisinin.
Therefore it makes absolutely no sens for poor countries to throw valuable anti-malarials onto the garbage heap! Because if you remove only artemisinin from your leaves, ther is still plenty of anti-malaria activity remaining, that may in fact be even higher than the effect of the isolated artemisinin. We quote: “The … (other) fractions contained no detectable amounts of artemisinin and/or artemisinin derivates suggesting that their activity was caused by other, so far unknown products” (Francois, G et al: Antiplasmodial activities of sesquiterpene lactones and other compounds in organic extracts of Artemisia annua, Planta Medica (1993) vol. 59 (7), pp A677-A678).
3. Artemisinin is only one of 29 sesquiterpene in Artemisia annua. In addition Artemisia annua contains at least 36.