Artemisia Annua

I won this plant on a local nursery's appreciation day. They had a talk about herbs and gave away the plants as gifts to the audiences. I've never heard about this herb before and so far I've been enjoying its nice fragrance. This week the plant is loaded with small flowers. I looked up on the internet to learn more about it and discovered some interesting informations.

This herbaceous plant, which is also known as Wormwood, has medicinal properties that has been used to cure malaria in Asia and Africa and as recently discovered, cancer. It is also one of the ingredients for absinthe, an alcohol beverage.

These paragraphs are quoted from Cancer Salves' site on wormwood as the basis of cancer-fighting pills. Go to this site to read the whole article.

A nontoxic pill that could be taken on an outpatient basis to combat breast cancer or leukemia sounds like a fantasy, but the treatment is becoming a reality due to the investigation of a University of Washington research team into an ancient Chinese remedy for malaria....

"Not only does it appear to be effective, but it's very selective," Lai said. "It's highly toxic to the cancer cells but has a marginal impact on normal breast cells." ...

The use of the bitter herb wormwood is nothing new. Used for centuries to rid the body of worms, it is also an ingredient in the alcoholic beverage absinthe, now banned in most countries.

Artemisinin, the compound that Lai and Singh have found to fight cancers, isn't new either. It was extracted from the plant Artemesia annua L., commonly known as wormwood, thousands of years ago by the Chinese, who used it to combat the mosquito-borne disease malaria. The treatment with artemisinin was lost over time but rediscovered during an archaeological dig in the 1970s that unearthed recipes for ancient medical remedies....

In the current study, after eight hours, just 25 percent of the cancer cells remained. By the time 16 hours had passed, nearly all the cells were dead...

The next step, according to Lai, is animal testing. Limited tests have been done in that area. In an earlier study, a dog with bone cancer so severe it couldn't walk made a complete recovery in five days after receiving the treatment. But more rigorous testing is needed...

"The cost is another plus: At $2 a dose, it's very cheap. And with the millions of people who have already taken artemisinin for malaria, we have a track record showing that it's safe."