Oxidative Stress in Human Infectious Diseases – Present and Current Knowledge About Its Druggability

Abstract

Infectious diseases caused by parasites are a major threat for entire mankind, especially in the tropics. These infections are not only restricted to humans, they are also predominant in animal health. Just a few years ago infectious diseases caused by parasites were classified as an issue of the past. Due to the elevating level of drug resistance of these pathogens against the current chemotherapeutics, the need for new drugs became even more important. In particular parasitic diseases such as malaria, leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis, amoebiasis, tri‐ chomoniasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis, filariasis and schistosomiasis are major health problems, especially in “developing” areas (Renslo and McKerrow, 2006; Pal and Bandyo‐ padhyay, 2012). A variety of these parasitic diseases, which comprises the so called neglect‐ ed diseases Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis and of course malaria (Chatelain and Ioset, 2011), are transmitted by vectors and therefore attempts to combat transmission became prominent. In contrast to the treatment of bacterial infections with antibiotics there are no “general” antiparasitic drugs. The use of a specific drug is dependent on the parasitic organism and therefore has to be individually chosen (Khaw et al., 1995).