Abstract
Tuberculosis is considered one of the most important epidemiological diseases worldwide. The current treatment for tuberculosis is a combination of antituberculosis drugs for at least 9 months. Nowadays, the search for new pharmacological agents for the treatment of tuberculosis is an urgent endeavor. Microalgae produce a wide variety of molecules that possess biological activities of pharmaceutical interest. Therefore, the objective of this work was to evaluate the antimycobacterial activity of hexane crude extracts of 6 microalgae: Chlamydomonas mexicana, Porphyridium cruentum, Isochrysis galbana, Rhodomonas sp., Aphanocapsa marina, and Nitzschia palea. All of the hexane extracts inhibited at least 90% of the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv at a concentration of 100 μg ml-1. The hexane crude extract of I. galbana had the highest antimycobacterial activity displaying a percentage inhibition that was equal to that of the antituberculosis drug isoniazid and having a minimum inhibitory concentration of 50 μg ml-1. These findings demonstrate that microalgae are an excellent source for the search of novel antimycobacterial compounds.
Highlights
Tuberculosis (TB), acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), and malaria are considered the most important epidemiological diseases worldwide (Sotgiu & Migliori 2014)
The highest biomass production was for A. marina (224.4 mg l-1) while the lowest production was for P. cruentum (60.7 mg l-1)
The highest extraction yield was for I. galbana (7.7%) while the lowest yield was for A. marina (1.0%) and C. mexicana (1%)
Summary
Tuberculosis (TB), acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), and malaria are considered the most important epidemiological diseases worldwide (Sotgiu & Migliori 2014). The current treatment of TB is a combination of antituberculosis drugs over 9 to 12 months to ensure the total eradication of mycobacteria (World Health Organization 2016). This extended period of medication is one of the main factors of nonadherence, which favors the appearance of drug-resistant Mtb strains (Migliori et al 2007). Certain infectious diseases that are caused by drug-resistant bacteria can be treated with alternative drugs (Powers 2004) This approach cannot be applied to TB, because the drugs that are used to treat drug-resistant Mtb strains are more expensive, less effective, and more toxic (Sotgiu & Migliori 2014). Due to the need for more efficacious antituberculosis drugs, namely those with a shorter treatment duration, few side effects and that do not require being combined with other drugs and an increase in drug-resistant Mtb strains, the search for new pharmacological agents for the treatment of TB is a critical issue worldwide (Hoagland et al 2016)
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