The traditional oriental medicine can help treat tuberculosis

A traditional oriental medicine used to treat malaria may become a powerful weapon for the fight against tuberculosis (Tuberculosis).

The mixture called artemisinin, extracted from a western variety called Scientific Artemisia annua , brought the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine to Chinese chemist Tu Youyou thanks to its extremely effective treatment of malaria. .

Ngai west Artemisia annua - Ngai yellow flowers.

Now the latest research on artemisinin mixture has shown the ability to control tuberculosis-causing bacteria of artemisinin molecules. Michigan State University microbiologist Robert Abramovitch screened more than 500,000 different compound samples in the laboratory and found artemisinin has a mechanism to block the defense of pathogenic bacteria. Tuberculosis, mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb)

Abramovitch said - "When TB bacteria are controlled, they become easier to cope with antibiotics, making the treatment process easier and much faster than present."

Mtb bacteria need oxygen to survive in the human body, and it is one of the factors exploited to treat tuberculosis by creating a membrane called granuloma to prevent the bacteria Mtb from reaching oxygen. However, this method cannot completely destroy Mtb but only push them into a state of hibernation, the state in which they consume less oxygen.

Mtb bacteria is the main cause of tuberculosis.

So the team looked for molecules that could block Mtb's oxygen uptake, making them inoperable and becoming more sensitive to antibiotics.

After analyzing about 540,000 mixtures, the team found six molecules that could inhibit Mtb's oxygen sensor in various ways.

In the case of artemisinin, the mixture attacks a molecule of bacteria Mtb called heme . When this molecule is destroyed, Mtb's oxygen-sensing ability is lost and theoretically this will greatly increase the ability to kill bacteria. If Mtb is unable to identify the reduced oxygen content, they will not be able to return to hibernation and will die due to lack of oxygen.

In other words artemisinin can increase the effectiveness of the immune system and in the case of tuberculosis, it will help shorten the course of treatment and reduce the amount of antibiotics that must be used.

The course of treatment for tuberculosis is very long.

It usually takes more than 6 months to treat tuberculosis, which makes it one of the most difficult to treat diseases.

"Many patients are not patient enough to follow the full duration of such a long-term treatment regimen. Therefore shortening the duration of treatment is one of the extremely important factors to be able to treat definitively and Abramovitch said, "Preventing complications of disease" .

Although this discovery is a promising start to the application of artemisinin in the treatment of tuberculosis, it takes quite a bit of time for in-depth studies and clinical trials to be able to be used in general.

"If we want to use artemisinin we have to make sure that the antibodies to this drug will not change like it did in some malaria patients" - Abramovitch added.

Although there is still a lot of work to be done, there is no doubt that this traditional oriental medicine, together with the other 5 newly discovered mixtures, will open a new period in the treatment of tuberculosis.

"More than two million people globally are infected with Mtb bacteria and our new discovery offers a new way to destroy them," Abramovitch confidently said.