We always new that soup, and chicken soup for that matter was one of the best foods for you when you felt poorly. Now there is some weighty evidence to suggest it could help combat malaria.
Malaria is a deadly disease and kills about 435,000 people every year. The disease is caused by a blood parasite called Plasmodium falciparum. This parasite is transmitted to us through the blood-sucking antics of mosquitoes. The parasite is responsible for virtually all the deaths from malaria. There are other Plasmodium species which cause malaria but P. falciparum is the deadliest. It seems though that a humble bowl of soup might just do the trick in disrupting the lifecycle of the parasite.
Researchers as the Great Ormond Street Hospital with Imperial College in London established that consuming a nourishing bowl of soup such as a meat or vegetable broth was just as effective at tackling the malarial parasite as alleviating the symptoms of a cold.
Malaria could affect at least half of the word’s population and in 2017 the World Health Organisation found 219 million people with the disease. The disease is treated with antimalarial drugs but there is a growing awareness that drug resistance is being developed by the parasite.
The researchers examined 60 traditional broth recipes These were all contributed by children from a London primary school. These were all from ethnically diverse backgrounds. All these soups were examples of traditional recipes used to treat fever in their original heritage homelands. The researchers were extremely pleased with the findings. They had reasoned that the Chinese herbal medicine artemisin had been discovered in similar circumstances.
Filtered extracts of each of the 56 broths were incubated for 72 hours with different cultures of P. falciparum, to see if any of the soups might be able to stop the growth of sexually immature parasites that cause disease, as well as blocking sexual maturation – the stage at which the parasite can infect the mosquito.
Five broth mixes stopped or inhibited the growth of the sexually immature parasite by over 50 per cent. Two were as effective as dihydroartemesin which is another important antimalaria drug. Four other broths were more than 50 per cent effective at blocking sexual maturation, potentially stopping the transmission of malaria.
Study author Professor Jake Baum, from Imperial College London, said: “The utility of any broth found to have antimalarial activity will, of course, depend significantly on standardisation of soup preparation and ultimately identification of the active source ingredient, its fractionation and, towards its progression, detailed toxicology with first human cells and later preclinical trials.”
“This journey, mirroring that of artemisinin from the Qinghao herb, may as yet reveal another source of potent anti-infective treatment.”
The authors also said:
“At a time when there is a resurgent voice against evidence-based medicine, such exercises have great importance for educating the next generation about how new drugs are discovered, how they might work and how untapped resources still exist in the fight against global diseases of significance.”
The research was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The article appeared in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
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