Malaria continues to be a major health
problem globally. There
is an urgent need to find new antimalarials. Acriflavine (ACF) is
known as an antibacterial agent and more recently as an anticancer
agent. Here, we report that ACF inhibits the growth of asexual stages
of both chloroquine (CQ) sensitive and resistant strains of human
malarial parasite, Plasmodium falciparum in vitro at nanomolar concentration. ACF clears the malaria infection in vivo from the bloodstreams of mice infected with Plasmodium berghei. Interestingly, ACF is accumulated only
in the parasitized red blood cells (RBCs) and parasite specific transporters
may have role in this specific drug accumulation. We further show
that ACF impairs DNA replication foci formation in the parasites and
affects the enzymatic activities of apicoplast specific Gyrase protein.
We thus establish ACF as a potential antimalarial amidst the widespread
incidences of drug resistant Plasmodium strains.
Anopheles fluviatilis James is an important malaria vector in Indian subcontinent. An. fluviatilis exists as a complex of three sibling species, of which two species, T and U, have been colonized so far. Attempts were made to study the comparative susceptibility of species T and U of the An. fluviatilis complex to rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium vinckei petteri by using Anopheles stephensi Liston as calibrator for variable infectivity in different isolates. An. stephensi, which was used as control, became readily infected, with 60-65% mosquitoes carrying developing oocysts, whereas in species T and species U, approximately 50 and 63%, respectively, of mosquitoes carried oocyts. An. fluviatilis species T was found comparatively less susceptible to P. v. petteri sporogonic development compared with species U. Moreover, significantly lesser sporozoites rate (11%) was observed in species T compared with 31% in species U. Species T and species U are not considered as malaria vectors in India in the field. However, in the laboratory, both these species are able to support the malaria sporogony.
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