Abstract
Intestinal parasitic nematodes infect approximately two billion people worldwide. In the absence of vaccines for human intestinal nematodes, control of infections currently relies mainly on chemotherapy, but resistance is an increasing problem. Thus, there is an urgent need for the discovery and development of new anthelmintic drugs, especially ones with novel mechanisms of action. Medicinal plants hold great promise as a source of effective treatments, including anthelmintic therapy. They have been used traditionally for centuries and are mostly safe (if not, their toxicity is well-known). However, in most medicinal plants the compounds active against nematodes have not been identified thus far. The free-living nematode C. elegans was demonstrated to be an excellent model system for the discovery of new anthelmintics and for characterizing their mechanism of action or resistance. The compounds discussed in this review are of botanical origin and were published since 2002. Most of them need further studies of their toxicity, mechanisms and structure-activity relationship to assess more fully their potential as drugs.
Highlights
Intestinal parasitic nematodes continue to pose problems in human and veterinary medicine [1,2]
The reported anthelmintic activity of natural products from medicinal plants against intestinal parasitic nematodes and C. elegans is summarized in Tables 2 and 3, respectively
In vitro evidence of activity on a suitable parasite is probably essential for progressing a compound for further development, well-documented anthelmintic traditional use, in conjunction with C. elegans activity, gives more confidence that the activity will persist on parasites, compared to compounds emerging from a screen of a chemical library [114,115]
Summary
Intestinal parasitic nematodes continue to pose problems in human and veterinary medicine [1,2]. Nematodes are the most abundant and ubiquitous multicellular organisms on earth, with an estimated 100,000 to 1,000,000 species (https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/Collections/ ANIC/Insect-research/Roundworms-Research) They are organisms with long, thin, unsegmented tube-like bodies, a longitudinal digestive tract and an anterior mouth. Intestinal parasitic nematodes, which are the most common and persistent parasitic nematodes in humans, infect approximately two billion people worldwide, especially in developing countries These intestinal parasitic nematodes mainly include Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, Ancylostoma duodenale, Necator americanus, Strongyloides stercoralis, Enterobius vermicularis and Capillaria philippinensis. The adults live in the human intestine and produce eggs, which are shed with faeces and embryonate in the soil These parasite infections can cause detrimental effects on human growth, nutrition, cognition, school performance, work productivity and pregnancy, which may severely impair the quality of life [5,8]. The annual economic losses caused by parasitic nematodes in livestock run into billions of dollars worldwide [13]
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