Chemistry is everywhere. Even where you don't expect it. With the 'chemistry =' poster campaign we want to show how self-explanatory chemistry actually is. Want to know more about the chemistry involved? Scroll down for additional information.
Of course prevention is better than cure. Travellers to countries where malaria mosquitoes are endemic use prophylactics like mefloquine, proguanil or doxycycline. Vaccination would be much better, but unfortunately no vaccine yet exists.
Resistent parasites
Still managed to get bitten by a malaria mosquito? A relatively new treatment is a combination therapy based on artemisinin. An advantage to this treatment is that the parasites develop resistance less quickly.
Chinese tea
Artemisinin is the active ingredient in the Artemisia annua plant. In China this has been used in a herbal tea to treat malaria and haemorrhoids for over two thousand years. With the help of genetic engineering, researchers recently managed to produce an artemisinin precursor in yeast cells. So in the future it’ll also be possible to make the medicine without the plant. That’s the low-down on malaria medicine!
