Atividades de derivados purínicos em Leishmania amazonensis e Leishmania chagasi

Abstract

Leishmaniasis are a group of diseases caused by different species of the protozoan parasite Leishmania, which affect more than 12 million people worldwide. The clinical manifestations may range from single cutaneous lesions to fatal visceral leishmaniasis. Conventional chemotherapy relies on multiple parenteral injections with pentavalent antimonials that are considerably toxic and prone to induce resistance. Second-line drugs, such as amphotericin B and its lipid formulations, are either too toxic or expensive for routine use in developing countries. Considering it, the search for more effective drugs against Leishmania became extremely necessary. In order to find new drugs against leishmaniasis this work checked the in vitro effect of purine derivatives. These substances were assayed against L. amazonensis and L. chagasi promastigotes and amastigotes of L. amazonensis through the colorimetric method of MTT and counting of parasites. It also examined the production of NO the promastigote forms and amastigote forms of Leishmania sp and the macrophages measured spectrophotometrically. Among the 13 derivatives of purine assayed four substances: 6-(3-chloropropylthio)-9H-purine, 2-(9H-purin-6-ylthio)acetic acid, salt of fluor of 7,8-dihydro-[1,4]thiazepino[3,2,4-hi]purine and 6-(3'-(thioethylamine) propylthio)purine, inhibited the growth of promastigote forms of L. amazonensis (IC50 values of 50, 39, 28 and 50 μM, respectively). Only the salt of fluor of the 8,9-dihydro-7H-[1,4]thiazepino[3,2,4-hi]purine, inhibited the growth of promastigotes of L. chagasi (IC50 value of 28μM). The 2-(9H-purin-6-ylthio)acetic acid presented the best anti-amastigotes activity and this substance reduced approximately 50% of the number of intracellular amastigotes after 48h of treatment. In general the derivatives of purine reduced the production of NO in promastigotes of Leishmania and macrophages but in the process of interaction parasite/host cell there were no significant changes in the production of NO. We also had tested citotoxicity against mammalian cells for all the compounds that present leishmanicidal effect but none of the substances were found to have significant toxicity effect. The results contributed for advance in the research for new anti-leishmania drugs and suggest that 2-(9H-purin-6-ylthio)acetic acid has promising antileishmanial potencial.