A nutritious traditional homemade soup with anti-malarial properties can help tackle malaria, according to a new study. Imperial College London researchers helped school children test their family soups for activity against malaria.
"Malaria kills more than 400,000 people per year and infects more than 200 million, yet resistance to our frontline drugs continues to emerge," study lead author Jake Baum, who is a Professor at Imperial College London, in the UK, told a news portal. Adding, "We may have to look beyond the chemistry shelf for new drugs, and natural remedies shouldn't be off our watch list."
For the study, the team tested soups from traditional family recipes from across the globe -Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The collection of soups varied, from vegetarian to chicken soups. The goal was to see if the broths contained activity against the malaria parasite.
Many of the broths were found to have activity against the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Some of the soups even helped to prevent it from growing. The team discovered five soups that helped to stop the parasite from growing by almost 50 per cent.
The team now hope to discover anti-malarial compounds. "It's really interesting to find potential routes for future drug development in something like your grandmother's soup. In all honesty, the true strength of the study, however, was engaging children in the idea of what's the difference between a natural remedy a real medicine -- the answer is evidence! The children understood that soups could really become a drug if you test them the right way," Baum told a news portal. The study's findings were originally published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.
There are many benefits to a hearty soup. A 2000 study, published in the journal CHEST, found chicken soup may be effective in fighting the flu. Researchers from the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Section of the Nebraska Medical Center in the United States (US) conducted the study. The findings suggest it contains medicinal properties that can offer relief from upper respiratory tract infections.
"A variety of soup preparations was evaluated and found to be variably, but generally, able to inhibit neutrophil chemotaxis. The current study, therefore, presents evidence that chicken soup might have an anti-inflammatory activity, namely the inhibition of neutrophil migration," Stephen Rennard, M.D., FCCP, told a news portal.
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