Antibiotics in malaria therapy: which antibiotics except tetracyclines and macrolides may be used against malaria?

Abstract

Malaria, a parasite vector-borne disease, is one of the most significant health threats in tropical regions, despite the availability of individual chemoprophylaxis. Malaria chemoprophylaxis and chemotherapy remain a major area of research, and new drug molecules are constantly being developed before drug-resistant parasites strains emerge. The use of anti-malarial drugs is challenged by contra-indications, the level of resistance of Plasmodium falciparum in endemic areas, clinical tolerance and financial cost. New therapeutic approaches are currently needed to fight against this disease. Some antibiotics that have shown potential effects on malaria parasite have been recently studied in vitro or in vivo intensively. Two families, tetracyclines and macrolides and their derivatives have been particularly studied in recent years. However, other less well-known have been tested or are being used for malaria treatment. Some of these belong to older families, such as quinolones, co-trimoxazole or fusidic acid, while others are new drug molecules such as tigecycline. These emerging antibiotics could be used to prevent malaria in the future. In this review, the authors overview the use of antibiotics for malaria treatment.

<p>Recent Progress in the Development of New Antimalarial Drugs with Novel Targets</p>

“…Doxycycline is also used for chemoprophylaxis in regions with high prevalent drug resistance. 32 The current strategy used to fight antimalarial drug resistance is the therapeutic use of drug combinations. This strategy used in the past through the utilization of fixed combinations.…”

Unpacking the Pathogen Box—An Open Source Tool for Fighting Neglected Tropical Disease

“…Therefore, inhibition of this target is unlikely a useful target for the management of malaria. However, inhibition of Pf topoisomerase II with fluoroquinolones and related compounds such as GSK299423 ( 565 ) has been shown to be a viable target for malaria inhibition …”

Translation-Targeting RiPPs and Where to Find Them

“…Thiopeptides comprise one of the best-studied subclasses of RiPPs, with more than 100 compounds characterized to date. Produced predominantly by Actinobacteria, they demonstrate various activities including antibacterial and antiplasmoidal (Gaillard et al, 2016), which result from their ability to inhibit translation by the prokaryotic ribosome and the ribosome within the apicoplast of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum (Clough et al, 1997). All known thiopeptides have the specific set of biosynthetic genes in their BGCs (Figure 2A), share common structural features ( Figure 2B), and use two major mechanisms for translation inhibition: they either interact directly with the ribosome (Figure 2C) or prevent the binding of aminoacyl-tRNA by the elongation factor EF-Tu ( Figure 2D).…”