A traditional medicine plant could fight drug-resistant malaria

Featured Sponsor

Store	Link	Sample Product
UK Artful Impressions	Premiere Etsy Store

“Labrador tea” refers to multiple closely related plants, all members of the genus Rhododendron. These are small evergreen shrubs with hairy leaves that, as the name suggests, are steeped to make herbal teas commonly used by Inuit and indigenous nations in the US and Canada. Drinks made from the leaves or roots can reportedly help treat colds or flu, headaches, stomach aches, nasal congestion, and many other ailments. Previous studies have shown that essential oils extracted from plants have antimicrobial properties, which could help fight antibiotic-resistant microbes. dwarf labrador tea, or rhododendron subarcticum, produces a particularly aromatic concoction and grows in the harsher conditions of the subarctic, which is found from Alaska to Siberia, just south of the Arctic Circle. Despite its common use as a traditional medicine, its chemical composition and potential antimicrobial applications remain relatively understudied. So, Normand Voyer and his colleagues wanted to characterize the composition of R. subarcticum for the first time and test its antiparasitic activity.

the team met R. subarcticum It leaves from Nunavik, a region in northern Quebec. The researchers extracted the essential oil from the leaves and analyzed it with gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and flame ionization detection to identify 53 compounds. It turns out that 64.7% of the oil was made up of ascaridol, followed by p-cymene at 21.1%. This combination of compounds has not been previously reported in closely related North American Labrador tea varieties, although it has been found in subspecies originating in Europe and Asia.

To see if this essential oil had antimalarial properties, the team exposed two strains of Plasmodium falciparum, a parasite that causes malaria, to oil or simply to ascaridol. In the experiment, one of the strains was resistant to known antimalarial drugs. The data showed that ascaridol was the main component that acted against both strains of the parasite, which is consistent with other traditional antiparasitic drugs also rich in the compound. The researchers say this work reinforces the importance of researching and protecting plants used in traditional medicines, especially those from harsher climates affected by climate change.

The authors thank the Whapmagoostui Cree Nation Council and the Kuujjuarapik Inuit Community Council for sharing their knowledge, and acknowledge funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Fonds de Recherche du Québec — Nature et Technologies , Sentinel North and IDEX UCA^Jedi.