Survey of artemisinin production by diverse Artemisia species in northern Pakistan

Abstract

Background: Artemisinin is the current drug of choice for treatment of malaria and a number of other diseases. It is obtained from the annual herb, Artemisia annua and some microbial sources by genetic engineering. There is a great concern that the artemisinin production at current rate will not meet the increasing demand by the pharmaceutical industry, so looking for additional sources is imperative.

Methods: In current study, artemisinin concentration was analysed and compared in the flowers, leaves, roots and stems of Artemisia annua and 14 other Artemisia species including two varieties each for Artemisia roxburghiana and Artemisia dracunculus using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

Results: The highest artemisinin concentration was detected in the leaves (0.44 ± 0.03%) and flowers (0.42 ± 0.03%) of A. annua, followed by the flowers (0.34 ± .02%) of A. bushriences and leaves (0.27 ± 0%) of A. dracunculus var dracunculus. The average concentration of artemisinin varied in the order of flowers > leaves > stems > roots.

Conclusion: This study identifies twelve novel plant sources of artemisinin, which may be helpful for pharmaceutical production of artemisinin. This is the first report of quantitative comparison of artemisinin among a large number of Artemisia species.

Figure 1

Field pictures of seventeen Artemisia species at the time of collection.

Figure 2

Geographical map of Northern Pakistan showing different locations of collection of Artemisia species.

Figure 3

Comparative concentration of artemisinin in flowers, leaves, stem and roots of all seventeen Artemisia species (Bar represents the mean values of artemisinin in each treatment and the alphabets above represents the LSD ranking of these values at α = 0.05).

Figure 4

Comparison of whole plant parts (flowers, leaves, stem and roots) artemisinin concentration among all seventeen Artemisia species (Bar represents the mean values of artemisinin in each treatment and the alphabets above represents the LSD ranking of these values at α = 0.05).