In vitro evaluation of the efficacy of deferoxamine against Leishmania major life cycle stages

Many regions of the world, including Saudi Arabia, are medically vulnerable by the spread of leishmaniasis. Although the effectiveness, the current available drugs suffer from the appearance of resistant strains in epidemic areas and their toxic side-effects. We report the use of the iron chelator deferoxamine (DFRX) that can be used as antileishmanial agents. Our experimental procedure was to follow up the growth of Leishmania major stages (extracellular promastigotes, exinic extracellular amastigotes and intracellular amastigotes) in presence of the tested compound in the culture media in different concentrations (10 μg/ml, 25 μg/ml, 50 μg/ml and no treatment) and comparing it to the untreated control. The compound showed antileishmanial activities as it showed great activity against the growth of the three Leishmania stages in a time and dose dependent manner. Finally, this compound shows a promising potential activity to be a possible antileishmanial compound alternatively or in combination with the currently used drugs.