Antimicrobials antimalarial drugs

It is now recognized that toxic actions of drugs to the myocardium are not exclusive to antitumour and/or the so-called cardiac drugs, and that many other drugs with diverse chemical structures, such as antimicrobials, antimalarials, antihistamines, psychiatric, and gastrointestinal medications, can profoimdly disrupt myocardium function, which at times can be fatal (Tamargo 2000 Haverkamp et al. 2000 Vandenberg et al. 2001). 

A rapid semiautomated microdilution method for the microbiological assay of the chloroquine has been developed by Desgardins (26). Antimalarial activity of chloroquine may be studied against cultured Plasmodium falciparum, microplates are used to prepare serial dilution of the drug. Parasites obtained from continuous stock cultures are subcultured in the micro-plates for 42 h. Inhibition of uptake of a radio labeled nucleic acid precursor by parasites serves as the indicator of antimicrobial activity. 

Plants accumulate STLs as a means of chemical defence. Thus, one of the primary ecological benefits of these compounds is certainly the fact that they are toxic to all kinds of microorganisms. Once more it is their alkylant potency that is most obviously responsible. The work on antimicrobial activity of earlier years has been summarized in various reviews, e.g. [1-3]. More recent work has indicated that some STLs may have potential as leads for new antiprotozoal drugs. Apart from the prominent antimalarial artemisinin which will be treated separately in the following section, several more common STLs have been demonstrated to possess antiplasmodial [77-79], antileishmanial [80] and antitrypanosomal activity [81-84], Unfortunately, in most cases such activities are accompanied by high non-specific cytotoxicity so that it is always necessary to compare the antiprotozoal activity with cytotoxic effects determined under the same conditions. 

BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY Antispasmodic [6640,6898,6899] choleretic [6715,6900] antischistosomal [6879] antimicrobial [6901], for staphylococcus aureus [6891] identification of candidate drugs for treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [6902] ligand-based virtual screening and design of antimalarial compounds [6903] pharmacological action [6904]. 

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