Artemisinin and its derivatives are the most effective antimalarial drugs. Besides anti-malarial activity, artemisinin and its derivatives have displayed wide-spectrum bioactivities such as anti-parasite, anti-tumor, and anti-obesity effects. Obesity is an epidemic worldwide which is a big threat to human health, but there are only a few approved anti-obesity drugs in the world. Also, these drugs are efficient to limited patients partly because their safety and efficacy are questioned. Anti-inflammatory therapies may be valuable in obesity treatment since growing evidence shows chronic metabolic inflammation is implicated in metabolic disease pathogenesis. As artemisinin and its derivatives display effective anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory properties with less toxicity, it provides an insight for novel drug development in obesity therapeutic strategies via immune-regulatory mechanisms. In this review, the potential of artemisinin and its derivatives to treat various metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes is discussed.

青蒿素及其衍生物是最有效的抗疟药。除了抗疟活性外，青蒿素及其衍生物还显示出广谱的生物活性，如抗寄生虫、抗肿瘤和抗肥胖作用。肥胖症是一种全球流行病，对人类健康构成重大威胁，但世界上获批的抗肥胖药物屈指可数。此外，这些药物对有限患者有效，部分原因是它们的安全性和有效性受到质疑。抗炎疗法在肥胖症治疗中可能很有价值，因为越来越多的证据表明慢性代谢性炎症与代谢性疾病的发病机制有关。由于青蒿素及其衍生物显示出有效的抗炎和免疫调节特性，且毒性较小，通过免疫调节机制。在这篇综述中，讨论了青蒿素及其衍生物治疗肥胖和糖尿病等各种代谢疾病的潜力。