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A team of medical doctors in RDCongo, Jerome Munyangi and Michel Idumbo, have run randomized clinical trials on a large scale in the Maniema province with the participation of some 1000 malaria infected patients. The trials were run in conformity with the WHO procedures and compared Artemisia annua and Artemisia afra with ACTs (Coartem and ASAQ). For all the parameters tested herbal treatment was significantly better than ACTs: faster clearance for fever and parasitemia, absence of parasites on day 28 for 99.5% of the Artemisia treatments and 79.5% only for the ACT treatments.

Diabetes burden is rising sharply in the African Region according to Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO Regional Director for Africa. Reports of type 2 diabetes in children – previously rare – is a growing concern. In some countries, children and adolescents account for almost half of all newly diagnosed cases of type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is a leading cause of blindness, amputation, kidney failure and heart disease.

The amino acid arginine is the only molecule in our food known to generate nitric oxide NO via NOS enzymes. It plays a key role in malaria therapy and cerebral malaria as described in previous blogs on www.malariaworld.org. NO derived from arginine is not only lethal for merozoites but also for gametocytes. NO is efficient against other diseases like leishmaniasis or filariasis (R O’Connor et al., Infection and Immunity, 2000, 68, 6101-6107).

Our partners at the Al Quds University in Palestine have found that a zinc-arginine complex strongly inhibits beta-hematin crystallization, like quinine does, but that zinc or arginine alone are not effective. Arginine and zinc play an important role in the human physiology. The plants from the Artemisia family are rich in these constituents which play probably a key role against malaria and other diseases. They easily form a complex in a large range of reagent concentrations (E Bottari et al., Monatshefte Chemie 2014, 145, 1707-1714).

Parasites are endowed with powerful and host-independant mechanisms which de novo synthesize or regenerate reduced glutathione (GSH) and protect the parasites from oxidative damage. GSH can penetrate from the extracellular space into the host cytosol but the parasite membrane is impermeable to peptides (H Atamna et al., Eur J Biochem 1997, 15, 670-9).. Glutathione is one of the most powerful anti-oxidants. It is a tripeptide formed by the amino acids glycine, cysteine and glutamic acid. It inhibits the action of arginine which produces NO and expels it from the food vacuole.