Soup can be as effective as antimalarial drugs in fighting malaria, study says

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It might sound like an old wives’ tale but malaria – which was responsible for 435,000 deaths worldwide in 2017 – could be treated with a bowl of homemade soup.

Scientists at Imperial College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital have found a bowl of nourishing meat or vegetable broth isn’t just good for feeding a cold but could be essential to tackling malarial parasites.

A variety of soups were tested and some were found to successfully interrupt the life cycle of plasmodium falciparum, the parasite which is transmitted to humans through the bite of a mosquito and is responsible for 99 per cent of malaria deaths.

Over 50 per cent of the world’s population is vulnerable to malaria and 219 million people contracted it in 2017, according to the World Health Organisation.

Although in many cases it is treated with antimalarial drugs, scientists are concerned about the potential for growing drug resistance.

The researchers were prompted to look into the benefits of traditional soups after finding the ingredient ‘artemesinin’, in the qinghao herb, which is used in Chinese herbal medicine, had antimalarial properties.

The team asked pupils from Eden Primary School in London to bring in samples of homemade soup broths using family recipes from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

In total there were 56 broths incubated for three days with different cultures of the malarial parasite to see if any could halt the growth of sexually immature parasites.

They also assessed whether the samples could block full sexual maturation – the stage at which the parasite infects the mosquito.

Although many samples were found to increase the risk of parasite growth, five of the broths curbed growth by 50 per cent with two of them proving as effective as leading antimalarial drug, dihydroartemisinin.

Four others were more than 50 per cent effective at blocking sexual maturation, which could be helpful in stopping malarial transmission.

The recipes of the vegetarian, chicken and beef-based broths all varied and no particular ingredient was common to those which stopped the parasite growth.

The active ingredient will be studied in further clinical trials, according to the study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The authors 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.”