A team of researchers that includes Worcester Polytechnic Institute Biology Professor Pamela Weathers has found that extracts from the leaves of the Artemisia annua plant, a medicinal herb also known as sweet wormwood, inhibit the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and two of its recent variants.
The team, which included researchers from Columbia University in New York and the University of Washington at Seattle, also found that extracts of the plant were more effective against the virus when levels of a key therapeutic compound in the plant, artemisinin, were low. The in vitro findings led the researchers to suggest that one or more compounds in Artemisia annua, or A. annua, that have not yet been identified may point to a safe, low-cost therapeutic treatment for SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Artemisia annua has been studied extensively, and it has been used safely for more than 2,000 years in traditional medicine to treat a variety of fever-related ailments,” Weathers said. “A. annua could provide clues to new safe, cost-effective small molecule therapies or even be used as an antiviral nutraceutical.”
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Journal of Ethnopharmacology. Study Paper:
