Bioactivity of Natural Polyphenols as Antiparasitic Agents and their Biochemical Targets

Abstract

Background: Leishmaniasis and trypanosomiasis are diseases that affect public health worldwide due to their high incidence, morbidity, and mortality. Available treatments are costly, prolonged, and toxic, not to mention the problem of parasite resistance. The development of alternative treatments is justified and polyphenols show promising activity. Objective: The main aim of this mini-review was to analyze the most promising phenolic compounds with reported antileishmanial and antitrypanosomal activity as well as their mechanisms of action. Results: We found that the mode of action of these natural compounds mainly lignans, neolignans, and flavonoids depends on the organism they act on and includes, macrophage activation, induction of morphological changes such as chromatin Conclusion: Although the specific molecular targets, bioavailability, route of administration, and dosages of some of these natural compounds need to be determined, polyphenols and their combinations represent a very promising and safe strategy to be considered for use against Leishmania spp and Trypanosoma spp. In addition, these compounds may provide a scaffold for developing new, more potent, and more selective antiprotozoal agents.

Could natural terpenes be an alternative for the treatment of neglected tropical diseases?

“…Therefore, there is a continuous effort to discover new drugs to improve the treatment of these parasitosis. Plants possess numerous biologically active chemical compounds, including flavonoids, anthocyanidins, coumarins, and terpenes, which exhibit antiparasitic activity (Da Silva et al., 2018; Raimundo et al., 2022; Soto‐Sánchez, 2022). Terpenes are a very diverse group of molecules with very different structures and functions, of regular size, consisting of complete isoprene units (C 5 H 8 ).…”