Cryptolepis is a climbing shrub native to West Africa whose roots have been used for centuries to treat malaria, fevers, and infections. Its full scientific name is Cryptolepis sanguinolenta, and it has gained significant attention in recent years for laboratory research showing potent activity against the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, as well as several other tick-borne pathogens. Most people encounter the name while researching botanical options for tick-borne infections, though the plant has a much longer history in traditional African medicine.
The Plant Itself
Cryptolepis sanguinolenta is a thin-stemmed, twining shrub that grows in tropical rainforests, thickets, and mountainous areas across West and Central Africa. It produces small greenish-yellow flowers and horn-like seed pods filled with tiny pinkish seeds embedded in silky hairs. The leaves are smooth and elliptical, growing up to about 7 cm long.
The most distinctive feature is the sap. When you cut the stem, it releases an orange liquid that rapidly turns deep red on exposure to air. This color-changing sap is extremely bitter. The roots, which are the primary medicinal part, are yellowish-brown on the outside with a yellow interior and a bitter taste. When dried, the leaves, stems, and roots give off a noticeably sweet fragrance.
Traditional Uses in West Africa
In Ghanaian and broader West African folk medicine, cryptolepis root has long been prepared as a tea or decoction to treat malaria and bring down fevers. It is also traditionally used for urinary tract infections, upper respiratory infections, and gastrointestinal complaints. The root is typically boiled in water or steeped as a tea, and the intensely bitter taste is considered part of its identity as a medicinal plant. In Ghana, a standardized preparation called “Phyto-Laria” was developed from the aqueous root extract specifically for malaria treatment.
Key Active Compounds
The pharmacological power of cryptolepis comes primarily from a group of alkaloids concentrated in the roots. The most studied is cryptolepine, which belongs to a class of compounds called indoloquinolines. A related alkaloid, neocryptolepine, is also present and biologically active.
These compounds work by inserting themselves directly into the DNA of target organisms, a process called intercalation. Once wedged between the strands of DNA, they interfere with an enzyme essential for DNA replication in bacteria, parasites, and cancer cells. This dual mechanism, physically disrupting DNA structure while also blocking the molecular machinery needed to copy it, helps explain why cryptolepis shows activity against such a wide range of organisms. Cryptolepine also reduces inflammation by blocking the production of signaling molecules that drive the inflammatory response, and it lowers blood sugar through pathways that are still being studied.
Antimalarial Research
Cryptolepis has the strongest clinical evidence for malaria treatment. In a study of 44 patients with uncomplicated malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum, a tea bag preparation made from 2.5 grams of dried ground root achieved a 93.5% cure rate. More than half the patients cleared the malaria parasite from their blood within 72 hours, with an average clearance time of about 82 hours. Notably, the average fever clearance time was 25.2 hours, roughly half the 48 hours typical of chloroquine, a standard antimalarial drug. Researchers have suggested it may even work against chloroquine-resistant strains, though larger trials are needed to confirm this.
Activity Against Lyme Disease Bacteria
The research finding that put cryptolepis on the radar for many people came from a 2020 study published in Frontiers in Medicine. Researchers tested a panel of botanical extracts against Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium responsible for Lyme disease, including both actively growing bacteria and dormant “stationary phase” forms. These dormant forms are particularly relevant because they are thought to contribute to persistent symptoms and are notoriously difficult to kill with standard antibiotics.
Cryptolepis sanguinolenta was the top performer. At a 1% concentration, it was the only extract that completely eradicated all stationary phase Borrelia, including the clumped aggregated forms that tend to be hardest to eliminate. When researchers tried to regrow the bacteria after treatment, nothing came back after 21 days. By contrast, the clinically used antibiotics doxycycline and cefuroxime at their standard concentrations could not sterilize the culture, and live spirochetes were still visible after the same 21-day subculture period. Even at the lower concentration of 0.25%, cryptolepis dissolved essentially all Borrelia cells, with researchers finding almost no live or dead cells remaining under the microscope.
It is important to emphasize that these are laboratory (in vitro) results, not human clinical trials for Lyme disease. What happens in a test tube does not always translate to what happens in the human body, where factors like absorption, metabolism, and tissue penetration all matter. No controlled human trial has yet tested cryptolepis specifically for Lyme disease treatment.
Activity Against Other Tick-Borne Pathogens
Tick bites frequently transmit more than one pathogen at a time. Up to 23% of people with babesiosis, a parasitic infection of red blood cells, also have concurrent Lyme disease. Coinfected patients tend to experience more symptoms for a longer duration than those with Lyme alone, making the ability to target multiple pathogens particularly appealing.
In laboratory testing, cryptolepis showed strong inhibitory activity against Babesia duncani, the parasite that causes babesiosis. Its key compound, cryptolepine, had an effective inhibitory concentration of 3.4 micromolar, which is lower (meaning more potent) than the currently used drugs quinine (10 micromolar) and clindamycin (37 micromolar). When Babesia-infected cells were treated at higher concentrations of cryptolepine, the parasite did not regrow over a six-day observation period. Separate research also documented activity against Bartonella henselae, another common tick-borne co-infection. This breadth of activity across Borrelia, Babesia, and Bartonella is unusual for a single botanical and is a major reason cryptolepis has attracted interest from both researchers and patients dealing with complex tick-borne illness.
COVID-19 Pilot Trial
A small phase II clinical trial conducted in Ghana between 2021 and 2022 tested “Nibima,” a water-based extract of cryptolepis root, as an add-on treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients with moderate to severe disease. Patients receiving Nibima (30 ml three times daily for up to 14 days) recovered roughly two days earlier than those in the control group. Mortality was also lower in the treatment group: one death compared to four in the control arm. The trial was small, with only about nine patients per group, so the results are preliminary. But the study, published in 2025, represents one of the few randomized controlled trials of the plant for any condition.
How It Is Typically Used
Cryptolepis is available commercially as a tincture (alcohol extract), dried root for tea, and in capsule form. In traditional practice, the root is boiled in water and drunk as a bitter tea. In the malaria clinical study, a standardized tea bag containing 2.5 grams of dried ground root was the preparation used. Herbalists and integrative practitioners in the United States and Europe who recommend cryptolepis for tick-borne illness typically use alcohol-based tinctures, though standardized dosing protocols have not been established through large clinical trials.
No formal toxicological limits have been published in the available human studies, and the malaria trial reported it as generally safe at the doses used. However, given that cryptolepine interferes with DNA replication and has documented cytotoxic properties, meaning it can kill human cells as well as pathogen cells, the safety profile at higher doses or with long-term use remains unclear. The compound also has blood-pressure-lowering and blood-sugar-lowering effects, which could interact with medications for hypertension or diabetes.
What the Evidence Adds Up To
Cryptolepis occupies an unusual position: it has centuries of traditional use, genuinely striking laboratory results, a handful of small but real clinical trials, and growing popularity among people seeking alternatives for difficult-to-treat infections. The antimalarial evidence is the most mature, with human data showing cure rates above 90% for uncomplicated malaria. The Lyme disease and Babesia data are compelling at the lab bench but have not yet been tested in controlled human trials. This gap between promising in vitro results and proven clinical effectiveness is the central limitation of the current evidence, and it is a gap that matters when making decisions about treatment.