• Question: Apart from willow, what other medicine have been developed from plants?

    Asked by fund520cake on 19 Dec 2024.
    • Photo: Eleftheria Stavridou

      Eleftheria Stavridou answered on 19 Dec 2024:

      Many important medicines have been developed from plants. one very common is morphine which a very powerful pain reliever and it is extracted from opium poppy

Comments

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    Vincristine is a drug used for treating certain types of cancer in dogs – it originates from the periwinkle plant. Like some other drugs used to treat cancer (in humans and other animals) it has some side effects which mean that it needs to be handled very carefully when it is being given to the patient and the side effects need to be monitored during the time when the dog is being treated.

  • Photo: Ai-Lan Lee

    Ai-Lan Lee commented on :

    Another famous example is the anti-malarial drug, artemisinin, which is found in the traditional Chinese herb called sweet wormwood. The herb has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat malaria, and in 1972, scientists extracted the molecule artemisinin from the plant and proved that it is effective against malaria. Today, it is used as part of combination therapies (using multiple medicines to treat a single disease) against malaria. The scientist who discovered artemisinin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015.