Soups Effective in Fighting Malaria, Study Says

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Scientists from Imperial College London and Great Osmond Street Hospital found that homemade soups are effective in fighting malaria, a mosquito-borne illness. The scientists decided to look into the positive effects of home remedies after the discovery of an antimalarial drug called artemisinin [aar-tuh-MI-suh-nuhn]. The drug comes from a Chinese medicinal herb used to treat fever. To conduct the study, the scientists gathered samples of homemade soups from schoolchildren in London. These samples were cooked using family recipes from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and they contained vegetables, beef, or chicken. The scientists filtered the soups and cultivated them with different cultures of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite responsible for malaria, to see if the soups could hinder the parasites’ growth. Results showed that five of the 56 soups were able to hinder the parasites’ growth by more than 50%. Two of these five soups were almost as effective as dihydroartemisinin [dahy-hahy-droh-aar-tuh-MI-suh-nuhn], a derivative of artemisinin. In addition, four other soups were over 50% effective at blocking the parasites’ capacity to mature up to a point where they can infect mosquitoes. This prevents the transmission of malaria. However, the scientists found no particular ingredient that indicated the strongest antimalarial properties. In the future, the scientists hope to identify which ingredients are highly antimalarial. They added that a soup’s antimalarial property will depend on its preparation and the identification of an active ingredient. The scientists believe that the study’s biggest takeaway is teaching children the difference between actual medicine and homemade remedies. They said the study is important in helping children understand the process of creating new medicine and the value of scientific evidence in this process.