Antimalarial drug effect how?Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology to uncover a key puzzle
Antimalarial drug effect how?Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology to uncover a key puzzle
Malaria is one of the most serious public health problem in the world, killing about 500000 people a year.
The impact of malaria
In many developing countries, malaria is a major cause of death and disease, including young children and pregnant women are the most affected group.The malaria to individuals and the government are of great social and economic costs, it is estimated that the direct costs (such as disease, treatment and die) at least up to 12 billion dollars a year.
17 one of the goals of sustainable development, the United Nations is at the end of 2030 malaria and other epidemics.However, this goal is one of the key challenges facing to a line of antimalarial drug resistant malaria incidence is higher and higher.Therefore, we need to find new antimalarial compounds, to help on a global scale against the disease.Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is helping scientists to carry out the findings.
More than half of human malaria cases causing parasites are single-celled protozoans, plasmodium falciparum.Most of the parasites, including malaria parasite plasmodium falciparum, has a complex life cycle, including through a series of different forms of development.Once it invade red blood cells (RBC), you will experience the development period of 48 hours, eventually lead to red blood cells decompose, releasing new parasites, can directly into another red blood cells.
The development process requires a lot of energy resources, therefore is associated with high glucose metabolism, this makes the metabolic activity measure good indicator of survival of the parasite.High metabolic activity of the life cycle stages are more susceptible to the effects of antimalarial drugs, and lower metabolic activity is better able to resist antimalarial drugs.Therefore, understanding of antimalarial interventions for parasites, the influence of different life stages is very important to develop effective treatments.
Reliable technology
Has been showed that p. falciparum infection of live erythrocyte glycolysis activity of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrum can be used for real-time monitoring.The researchers are now using this technology to study the antimalarial compounds affect malaria parasites within red blood cells in different stages.Nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum showed that p. falciparum infection of red blood cells of glucose consumption is about 20 times dormancy stage parasites.Since then, a variety of different ways of antimalarial drugs, including chloroquine, simvastatin quinone, clarithromycin, DDD107498 and artemisinin's influence on the glycolysis level also have been studied.
The study found that dormant stage of the parasite than metabolically active parasites of the life cycle of more tolerated antimalarial drugs, it is this dormant state can lead to drug-resistant malaria.Therefore, the metabolic activity of low parasite has active new available antimalarials is a focus of research.
Brooke used in the study of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) detection is a powerful tool for the global fight against malaria, help the United Nations to achieve its goal in 2030.Brooke's ADVANCE nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer help screening to determine potential new drug candidates, reduce more resistant to the parasite's survival ability, eventually to prevent the spread of the disease.
reference
- The WHO World Malaria Report,http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-report-2017/en/(2017).
- Centers for diseases Control and Prevention (CDC)https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html.
- Shivapurkar R, et al. Evaluating antimalarial efficacy by tracking glycolysis in Plasmodium falciparum using NMR spectroscopy. The Scientific Reports, 2018;8: Article number: 18076.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-36197-3#Sec8