Department of Molecular Tropical Medicine and Genetics, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand.
Department of Helminthology, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Acta Trop. 2022 Nov;235:106665. doi: 10.1016/j.actatropica.2022.106665. Epub 2022 Aug 24.
Control and elimination of parasitic diseases are nowadays further complicated by emergence of drug resistance. Drug resistance is a serious threat as there are not many effective antiparasitic drugs available. Aside from drug resistance, it is also favorable to look for alternative therapeutics that have lesser adverse effects. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) were found to address these issues. Some of its desirable traits are they are fast-acting, it has broad action that the pathogen will have difficulty developing resistance to, it has high specificity, and most importantly there are extensive sources such as bacteria; invertebrate and vertebrate animals as well as plants. Aside from this, AMPs are also found to modulate the immune response. This review would like to describe AMPs that have been studied for their antiparasitic activities especially on parasitic diseases that causes high mortality and exhibits drug resistance like malaria and leishmaniasis and to discuss the mechanism of action of these AMPS.
现如今，寄生虫病的防治工作变得更加复杂，因为寄生虫的耐药性问题日益严重。耐药性是一个严重的威胁，因为现有的有效抗寄生虫药物并不多。除了耐药性之外，寻找副作用更小的替代疗法也是有利的。抗菌肽（AMPs）被认为可以解决这些问题。其具有一些理想的特性，例如作用迅速、作用范围广，使病原体难以产生耐药性、特异性高，最重要的是来源广泛，包括细菌、无脊椎动物和脊椎动物以及植物。除此之外，抗菌肽还可以调节免疫反应。本综述将描述已被研究用于抗寄生虫活性的抗菌肽，特别是针对疟疾和利什曼病等死亡率高且表现出耐药性的寄生虫病，并讨论这些抗菌肽的作用机制。
