In vivo quantification of artesunate and chloroquine effect in the development of luciferase expressing murine Plasmodium parasites in C57BL/6 and BABL/c mice.

• Main Author: Teo, Hutt Wang.
• Other Authors: School of Biological Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Biological sciences::Microbiology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/38869
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Malaria is a deadly disease that is responsible for 300-500 million infections and kills about 1 million people annually. As a vaccine is still not available, chloroquine has been the anchor in the treatment of malaria and is the preferred drug. However, with the spread of chloroquine resistance, the need for an alternative drug with comparable efficiency is pressing. Artemisinin derivatives have the same efficacy as chloroquine and are the recommended drug to treat severe cases of malaria, such as cerebral malaria (CM). Since the malaria parasites sequester in deep organs, we investigated whether these drugs inhibit with the same efficacy, sequestered parasites and peripheral parasites. Thus, we infected mice with Plasmodium parasites and used bioluminescent imaging to monitor parasite sequestration throughout treatment. Concurrently, peripheral blood parasitemia was monitored by flow cytometry. We found that 10-days treatment of both artesunate and chloroquine prevented the development of experimental cerebral malaria (ECM) in C57BL/6J mice and prolonged their survival. Furthermore, artesunate’s efficiency was higher in BALB/cJ mice compared to C57BL/6J mice, but the recrudescence rate was high. Chloroquine treatment eradicated the parasites completely without recrudescence. Thus, the results suggested that artesunate is not as effective as chloroquine in treating murine malaria, and a longer course and dosage of treatment is required to have the equivalent chloroquine effect.