page_title: Artemisia annua
section_title: Mechanism
hierarchical_section_title: Artemisia annua / Medicinal uses / Mechanism
caption_attribution_description: English: Artemisia annua seeds from Steve Hurst. Provided by ARS Systematic Botany and Mycology Laboratory. China, Tientsin
context_page_description: Artemisia annua, also known as sweet wormwood, sweet annie, sweet sagewort, annual mugwort or annual wormwood, is a common type of wormwood native to temperate Asia, but naturalized in many countries including scattered parts of North America.
context_section_description: The proposed mechanism of action of artemisinin involves cleavage of endoperoxide bridges by iron, producing free radicals (hypervalent iron-oxo species, epoxides, aldehydes, and dicarbonyl compounds) which damage biological macromolecules causing oxidative stress in the cells of the parasite.  Malaria is caused by apicomplexans, primarily Plasmodium falciparum, which largely reside in red blood cells and itself contains iron-rich heme-groups (in the form of hemozoin). In 2015 artemisinin was shown to bind to a large number targets suggesting that it acts in a promiscuous manner.
caption: Seeds
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