In the current era of intensified and integrated control against schistosomiasis and other neglected tropical diseases, there is a need to carefully rethink and take into consideration disease-specific issues pertaining to the diagnosis, prevention, control and local elimination. Here, we present a comprehensive overview about schistosomiasis including recent trends in the number of people treated with praziquantel and the latest developments in diagnosis and control. Particular emphasis is placed on children. Identified research needs are offered for consideration; namely, expanding our knowledge about schistosomiasis in preschool-aged children, assessing and quantifying the impact of schistosomiasis on infectious and noncommunicable diseases, developing new antischistosomal drugs and child-friendly formulations, designing and implementing setting-specific control packages and developing highly sensitive, but simple diagnostic tools that are able to detect very light infections in young children and in people living in areas targeted for schistosomiasis elimination.
The design, synthesis and biological evaluation of eighteen ferrocenyl derivatives (4A-12A and 4B-12B) of the most-well known drug against schistosomiasis, namely praziquantel (PZQ), are reported.These compounds which have been all isolated as racemates were unambiguously characterized by 1 H and 13 C NMR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and elemental analysis as well as by X-ray crystallography for 4A, 5A and 7A. Cytotoxicity studies revealed that the complexes were moderately toxic towards a cervical cancer cell line (HeLa) and, importantly, significantly less active towards a noncancerous cell line (MRC-5). The in vitro anthelmintic activity of the eighteen ferrocenyl PZQ derivatives was tested against Schistosoma mansoni and values in the micromolar range (26-68 µM) were determined for the four most active compounds. It was also demonstrated using two compounds of the series as models (8A and 8B) that the complexes were stable when incubated for 24 h at 37°C in human plasma.
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