An anti-bacterial and anti-fungal agent commonly found in toothpaste, soaps and detergents can be used as a drug against strains of malaria parasite that have grown resistant, a study led by an artificially-intelligent \u201crobot scientist\u201d has revealed.<\/p>\n
The study aided by the robot scientist \u201cEve\u201d discovered that the ingredient \u201ctriclosan\u201d affects parasite growth by specifically inhibiting an enzyme of the malaria parasite, called \u201cDHFR\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cDHFR\u201d is the target of a well-established antimalarial drug, pyrimethamine. However, resistance to the drug among malaria parasites is common, particularly in Africa.<\/p>\n
The researchers showed that \u201ctriclosan\u201d was able to target and act on this enzyme, even in pyrimethamine-resistant parasites. \u201cThe discovery by our robot \u201ccolleague\u201d Eve that \u2018triclosan\u2019 is effective against malaria targets offers hope that we may be able to use it to develop a new drug,\u201d said lead author Elizabeth Bilsland, Assistant Professor at the University of Campinas in Brazil.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know it is a safe compound, and its ability to target two points in the malaria parasite\u2019s lifecycle means the parasite will find it difficult to evolve resistance,\u201d Bilsland added in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.<\/p>\n
When used in toothpaste, \u201ctriclosan\u201d prevents the build-up of plaque bacteria by inhibiting the action of an enzyme known as enoyl reductase (ENR), which is involved in the production of fatty acids in liver.<\/p>\n
But, as the study showed that \u201ctriclosan\u201d has the potential to inhibit both ENR and DHFR, it may be possible to target the parasite at both the liver stage and the later blood stage, the researchers said.<\/p>\n
Malaria kills over half a million people each year, pre-dominantly in Africa and south-east Asia.<\/p>\n
While a number of medicines are used to treat the disease, the malaria parasites are growing increasingly resistant to these drugs, raising the spectre of untreatable malaria in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An anti-bacterial and anti-fungal agent commonly found in toothpaste, soaps and detergents can be used as a drug against strains of malaria parasite that have grown resistant, a study led by an artificially-intelligent \u201crobot scientist\u201d has revealed. The study aided by the robot scientist \u201cEve\u201d discovered that the ingredient \u201ctriclosan\u201d affects parasite growth by specifically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19221,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219\/revisions\/19221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}