Artemisia annua, also known as Sweet Wormwood, Sweet Annie, Sweet Sagewort is a type of wormwood that grows throughout the world.

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Artemisinin or Qinghaosu, is the active constituent of the herb Artemesia annua (sweet wormwood). Good quality Artemesia annua contains 0.3-0.5% artemisinin.

Artemisinin is used in the treatment of drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum malaria. In China, Artemisia annua L., is a plant that was traditionally used as an antipyretic. The activity of this wormwood can be explained by the presence of the active substance artemisinin. Soon, artemether, artemotil, artenimol, artesunate and sodium artesunate, derivatives of artemisinin, have been developed. Each has its own physical and pharmaceutical properties, dosage and dosage forms.

Novartis will ramp up cultivation of an antimalarial plant in Africa to meet spiraling demand for treatments of a disease that kills some one million people a year.

The Swiss drugmaker supplies Coartem, whose main ingredient artemisinin is derived from the artemisia annua plant, on a not-for-profit basis to developing countries stricken by chronic malaria. A shortfall of artemisinin combined with resistance to older treatments such as chloroquine has hampered a global drive to halve deaths from the mosquito-born disease by 2010, prompting Novartis to boost its cultivation of the plant. The artemisia annua plant is native to China, but Novartis said it has teamed up with Kenya's East African Botanicals group to boost cultivation to more than 1,000 hectares in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. This will bring total production to some 10,000 hectares, Novartis said, spreading the risk posed by adverse weather and enabling the Swiss firm to provide more than 100 million malaria treatments by the end of 2006. Artemisinin -based treatments, such as Coartem, fight falciparum malaria, the deadliest form of the disease that causes as many as 400 million infections and at least a million deaths a year. The WHO gauges demand for Artemisinin -based treatments at some 130 million treatments in 2006.  Novartis's Coartem drug would account for roughly two thirds of this quantity. Tight supplies of Artemisinin -based treatments prompted the aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) to criticize the WHO last month for relying too heavily on Coartem in its antimalaria program. Last November, Novartis said its traditional Chinese suppliers of artemisinin would only be able to deliver 30 million doses in 2005 -- half of the expected demand. French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA is working with a not-for-profit health group to develop its own artemisinin -based combination pill, which it hopes to launch in 2006.

Malaria
Suppositories derived from sweet wormwood kill the deadliest malaria parasites quickly and offer a stop-gap treatment for people in remote areas until they can reach a hospital. A single dose of any artemisinin derivative given rectally is better at clearing parasites after 24 hours than a conventional injection of the older drug quinine for people with severe malaria.

Artemisin questions
Q. Have you investigated the effects, side effects and interactions with conventional medications of Paw Paw Annonaceous acetogenins and of Artemisin derivates (artemisinin, artemether and artesunate) as I came through a lot of papers claiming for great efficiency against cancer ?
   A. We only have the research as listed above.