green fairy
Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 9:05 pm
Chemist & Druggist, August 23, 2003 p34
How the green fairy keeps malaria at bay. (absinthe)(Brief Article)
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2003 CMP Information Ltd.
Like you need another excuse to have an absinthe? Well, it seems that it really could help should you be suffering from a bout of malaria.
Researchers this week have announced progress on understanding how artemisinins - derived from artemisia or sweet wormwood - actually attack the malaria parasite. Although wormwood has a traditional role in treating malaria, no one had identified the mechanism until now. Researchers led by Professor Sanjeev Krishna at the St George's Medical School, have found that artemisinins work by selectively inhibiting calcium pumps in the parasites' cellular structure. The St George's team pioneered a technique using frog's eggs to study calcium pumps in the malaria parasite.
Of course, those of you who imbibe too much extract of wormwood in the form of absinthe or vermouth (from the French for wormwood, vermout, or the German name Wermut) may think that it causes the little plasmodia to go gaga, e la Vincent van Gogh.
However, it seems the much fabled hallucinatory properties are more likely to be connected to thujone, once thought to have similar properties to tetrahydrocannabinol, but which is now thought to antagonise GABA transmission at neuronal synapses.
As for that colonial antimalarial, a stiff gin and tonic - the tonic water's quinine is really too dilute to have a therapeutic effect.
Copyright: CMP Information Ltd.
How the green fairy keeps malaria at bay. (absinthe)(Brief Article)
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2003 CMP Information Ltd.
Like you need another excuse to have an absinthe? Well, it seems that it really could help should you be suffering from a bout of malaria.
Researchers this week have announced progress on understanding how artemisinins - derived from artemisia or sweet wormwood - actually attack the malaria parasite. Although wormwood has a traditional role in treating malaria, no one had identified the mechanism until now. Researchers led by Professor Sanjeev Krishna at the St George's Medical School, have found that artemisinins work by selectively inhibiting calcium pumps in the parasites' cellular structure. The St George's team pioneered a technique using frog's eggs to study calcium pumps in the malaria parasite.
Of course, those of you who imbibe too much extract of wormwood in the form of absinthe or vermouth (from the French for wormwood, vermout, or the German name Wermut) may think that it causes the little plasmodia to go gaga, e la Vincent van Gogh.
However, it seems the much fabled hallucinatory properties are more likely to be connected to thujone, once thought to have similar properties to tetrahydrocannabinol, but which is now thought to antagonise GABA transmission at neuronal synapses.
As for that colonial antimalarial, a stiff gin and tonic - the tonic water's quinine is really too dilute to have a therapeutic effect.
Copyright: CMP Information Ltd.
