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Medicinal plants as more sustainable therapeutic solutions: Artemisia annua and Artemisia afra as case studies

Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Humans have used botanicals as traditional medicines for millennia, yet Western biomedicine has shunned many of these as undefined and often unreliable. While not all botanicals have a strong scientific basis or can be directly used as therapeutics, two, Artemisia annua and Artemisia afra, are quite well-established for their safety and efficacy within ethnopharmacological and scientific literature. A. annua, being better studied, is especially effective against many diseases. It is inexpensive, has consistent phytochemical content within a cultivar grown in its local region, evades the evolution of parasite drug resistance, and can be reliably produced on both large and small scales. Well-defined botanical drugs offer major benefits for more sustainable global health-care. This review highlights these two plant species as examples of how the broader implementation of botanical drugs can decrease costs, promote environmental sustainability, and deliver economic benefits – especially to rural communities – by empowering them to manage their health-care needs more sustainably. Comparisons are made between the agricultural and production costs of an extracted natural product versus Artemisia as a traditional botanical medicine. The review also examines the impact of climate on these two crops and provides a brief comparison of the carbon footprints of traditionally produced botanical drugs versus their commercially produced counterparts. A specific, successful example of sustainable production of A. annua is also described. Overall, there are many well-established reasons to advocate for broader approval of botanical drugs to strengthen global health-care systems.
DOI: 10.36922/ghes.4927
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4407171011
FWCI: 0.998
Cites: 5
Cited by: 2
Related to: 10