In vitro antileishmanial activity of Aloe vera leaf exudate: A potential herbal therapy in leishmaniasis

Avijit Dutta, Goutam Mandal, Chitra Mandal*, Mitali Chatterjee

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Article peer-review

43 Scopus citations

Abstract

Aloe vera has wide spread use in health products, and despite several reports on the whole plant and inner gel, little work has been performed on the leaf exudate. Our aim was to evaluate the in vitro efficacy of Aloe vera leaf exudate (AVL) in leishmaniasis. Irrespective of the disease manifestation, promastigotes from strains responsible for cutaneous, mucocutaneous, and visceral leishmaniasis were susceptible to AVL and their IC50 ranged from 100 to 180 μg/ml. In axenic amastigotes cultured from a L. donovani strain 2001 responsible for visceral leishmaniasis, the IC50 was 6.0 μg/ml. AVL caused activation of host macrophages evident by an increased release of members of reactive oxygen species that was attenuated by preincubation with free radical scavengers. Collectively, our data indicates that AVL, via its direct leishmanicidal activity which can be further enhanced by activation of host macrophages, is an effective antileishmanial agent meriting further pharmacological investigations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)81-86
Number of pages6
JournalGlycoconjugate Journal
Volume24
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 01 2007
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Aloe vera
  • Antileishmanial
  • Leishmaniasis
  • Reactive oxygen species

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