Dried-leaf Artemisia annua: A practical malaria therapeutic for developing countries?

Table 4 Estimated number of patient treatments by current artemisinin combination therapy vs plant-based artemisinin combination therapy

Combination therapy drug	Adult treatments per ton of artemisinin
AL1	1.76 million
AS/AQ1	2.5 million
pACT leaves with 0.7% artemisinin2	8.6 million

¹http://www.rollbackmalaria.org/partnership/wg/wgprocurementsupply/docs/psmwg_ppACT-API.pdf, p.2 [cited May 27, 2014];

²Assumes a 6 day treatment with pACT, with each patient receiving 15 g dried leaves per full malaria treatment for leaves with 0.7% artemisinin. To obtain an amount of artemisinin equal to 1 T of the extracted drug, one would have to harvest 142.8 tons of dried A. annua leaves containing 0.7% artemisinin. AL: Artemether/lumefantrine; AS/AQ: Artesunate/amodiaquine; pACT: Plant-based artemisinin combination therapy.