Agrawal A, Tripathi L M, Puri S K, Pandey V C
Division of Biochemistry, Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, India.
Int J Parasitol. 1996 Apr;26(4):451-5. doi: 10.1016/0020-7519(96)00014-8.
Blood ammonia content and enzymes involved in ammonia metabolism, namely glutamine synthetase (GS), glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH), monoamine oxidase (MAO), alanine amino-transferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST), were studied in Plasmodium yoelii-infected drug-treated mice tissues. The ammonia content in blood increased with the rise of parasitaemia. Hepatic GS, GDH and MAO showed a marked decrease in enzyme activity during parasitic infection. In contrast, cerebral GS and MAO showed a significant increase during infection. However, the parallel measurement of renal enzymes did not show any noticeable alterations except for ALT and AST. Oral pyrimethamine treatment (10 mg/kg for 4 days) in infected mice (5-10%) returned the altered levels of the above enzymes to almost normal 1 week after the cessation of drug treatment.
