Abstract
Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease cause great impact on social and economic aspects of people living in developing countries. The treatments for these diseases are based on the same regimen for over 40 years, thus, there is an urgent need for the development of new drugs. In this scenario, Asteraceae plants (a family widely used in folk medicine worldwide) are emerging as an interesting source for new trypanocidal and leishmanicidal compounds. Herein, we provide a non-exhaustive review about the activity of plant-derived products from Asteraceae with inhibitory action toward Leishmania spp. and T. cruzi. Special attention was given to those studies aiming the isolation (or identification) of the bioactive compounds. Ferulic acid, rosmarinic acid, and ursolic acid (Baccharis uncinella DC.) were efficient to treat experimental leishmaniasis; while deoxymikanolide (Mikania micrantha) and (+)-15-hydroxy-labd-7-en-17-al (Aristeguietia glutinosa Lam.) showed in vivo anti-T. cruzi action. It is also important to highlight that several plant-derived products (compounds, essential oils) from Artemisia plants have shown high inhibitory potential against Leishmania spp., such as artemisinin and its derivatives. In summary, these compounds may help the development of new effective agents against these neglected diseases.
Highlights
Protozoa are unicellular eukaryotes that cause some of the most common diseases in humans and domestic animals
Several compounds were isolated from this extract and their activity was evaluated against T. cruzi intracellular amastigotes and L. donovani axenically grown amastigotes; while their toxicity was evaluated against L6 cells
Some leishmanicidal formulations containing artemisinin were already evaluated in models in vitro and in vivo, as examples: poly lactic co-glycolic acid nanoparticles (Want et al, 2014, 2015, 2017) and nanoliposomes (Want et al, 2017). It was demonstrated the in vivo action of the n-hexane fractions from leaves and seeds of A. annua in a murine model of visceral leishmaniasis caused by L. donovani
Summary
Protozoa are unicellular eukaryotes that cause some of the most common diseases in humans and domestic animals. The Trypanosomatidae family includes several human-infective protozoans, such as Leishmania spp., and Trypanosoma cruzi, and they cause Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, respectively. They affect mainly people living in developing countries, causing great disruption in their quality of life. Asteraceae Plants Against Trypanosomatids leishmaniasis comprises only five drugs: the pentavalent antimonial, amphotericin B and its liposomal formulation AmBisome, miltefosine, paromomycin, and pentamidine. Plants are emerging as interesting sources of new trypanocidal and leishmanicidal compounds They hold the promise for improvements in the field of drug development, and the ethnomedicinal knowledge plays an essential role in this process (Bermudez et al, 2016). The structures of the most promising compounds (those that presented Selective index ≥ 5) that are available at PubChem (https://pubchem.ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/) are shown in Figures 1, 2
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