Abstract
Background: Malaria is one of the most important parasitic diseases worldwide with high morbidity and mortality in tropical and subtropical areas. Available drugs for the treatment of Malaria are expensive, have side effects and/or there may be some drug-resistant species. Resistance to most antimalarial drugs has encouraged the development of new drugs. An replacement source for discovering such drugs is natural products. Venom is a complex mixture of active pharmaceutical ingredients. The purpose of this study was investigation of antimalarial activity of the fractions obtained from the venom of Iranian cobra, Naja naja oxiana. Methods & Materials: Lyophilized Persian Kobra snake venom of was obtained from the Toxicology department of Pasteur Institute of Iran. It was purified by gel filtration from a Sephacryl S-200 HR column. It was then followed by FPLC on a Mono Q ion exchange column. After the first column chromatography the fractions were lyophilized. Based on results five fractions were collected. The concentration of fractions determined and their anti-malaria activity estimated in vitro and the effective fraction was purified by the second column. SDS PAGE was carried out to test for purity of the effective fraction. Plasmodium falciparum 3D7 were grown in vitro by the method of Trager and Jensen. When the parasites reached 10%, the fractions were tested by the checker board method for 50% inhibitory concentration of the parasites as checked by counting method using giemsa stain. Results: The Third fraction did not have hemolytic effect at different concentrations. One of the venom fractions (0.02 mg/ml) with half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) value of 0/002 mg/ml after 48 hr with significance of p < 0.001was seen to be the most effective fraction against plasmodium falciparum (ring stage). The Third fraction was purified and was seen to be 63 KDa on SDS-PAGE. It was observed that this fraction reduced the viability of parasite and strongly inhibited of growth it. Conclusion: The Active fraction with higher efficacy and lower toxicity of Naja naja oxiana had an inhibitory effect on Plasmodium falciparum. The further studies are recommended to evaluate in vivo effects in animal models.
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