Leishmanicidal effect of Scrophularia striata essential oil

Objective: Treatment of leishmaniasis is often difficult due to expense, the necessity for intravenous administration, toxicity, and the increase in parasite drug resistance. Also, these drugs have secondary effects on the renal, cardiac, and hepatic systems. Thus, development of new agents is important for the control of disease. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of Scrophularia striata on different stages of Leishmania tropica.Materials Methods: Essential oil (EO) of Scrophularia striata was prepared and analysed with GC/MS. The Leishmania strain used in this study was L. tropica (MHOM/AF/88/KK27). The logarithmic promastigotes were grown at 26 °C in brain–heart infusion (BHI) medium plus 10 % heat-inactivated fetal calf serum (FCS), pH7.0, and 1 % of penicillin (50 U/ml) streptomycin (50 μg/ml) solution. Amastigote-like forms were obtained in BHI medium supplemented with 20 % FCS at pH5.5 after 48 h of incubation at 37 °C in the presence of 5 % CO2. After exposure of different stages of parasites to different concentrations of essential oil, viability of promastigotes and axenic amastigotes were investigated by MTT assay and the obtained results were expressed as 50% inhibitory concentration.Results conclusion: Essential oil analysis showed that nonane, linalool and α-terpineol were the most abundant compounds. In MTT assay IC50 was obtained 5.8 and 2.1% for L. tropica promastigotes and axenic amastigotes, respectively. The results of the present study revealed that nonane is the main component of the Scrophularia striata EO. This plant may be used as a natural leishmanicidal agent and further investigation is necessary to complete this claim.