تقييم الفعالية المضادة لليشمانيا لبعض الزيوت العطرية في الزجاج

Abstract EN

Leishmaniasis is a painless chronic skin disease that is caused by the protozoan parasite Leishmania.

Due to the importance of this disease and the side effects of chemical drugs, use of drugs of/from plant origin to treat Leishmaniasis is very important.

In order to contribute for the search of new drugs for leishmaniasis, four essential oils (EOs) of orange (Citrus sinensis), lemon (Citrus limonum), commercial lemon and cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) were obtained by steam distillation process and assessed their anti-Leishmania activity against promastigotes of Leishmania tropica.

Promastigotes were treated with different concentrations of the essential oil before and after emulsion for determination of the concentration causing 50% inhibition (IC50).

All the EOs were found to possess an irreversible antileishmanial activity on L.

tropica promastigotes in vitro in a dose-dependent pattern.

This study revealed that natural orange oil showed the strongest leishmanicidal activity against L.

tropica promastigotes (IC50, <0.001 μg/mL) among the four EOs studied.

Cinnamon oil exhibited antileishmanial activity with IC50 value 56 μg/ml, followed by lemon oil and commercial lemon oil with IC50 values 50 and 34 μg/ml, respectively.

There was no inhibition of growth with the vehicle control (10% DMSO).

Taken together, our results indicate that these essential oils affect the parasite viability being the emulsified Citrus sinensis essential oil the most effective against L.

tropica promastigotes, and this oil may represent a valuable source for therapeutic control of leishmaniasis.

The revealed antileishmanial activity supports further isolation and investigation of oil constituents for in vitro/in vivo evaluation.