Abstract

The study is carried out to evaluate the in vitro and in vivo effect of treatment of artemether against Blastocystis hominis infection. In addition, transmission electron microscopic examination (TEM) and histopathological studies of B. hominis were carried out. The effect of artemether on Blastocystis viability showed reduction in viability 7 and 15% after 1 h in the group treated with 500 and700 µg/ml, respectively. There are reductions in living cell count (LCC) and living cell rate (LCR) activity of artemether on B. hominis isolates in 500 and 700 µg/ml, respectively in both counts. The highest concentration (1000 µg/ml) caused rapid death of the parasite. The combination of artemether + metronidazole (MTZ) showed remarkable improvement in histopathological picture. By TEM examination, Blastocystis cells treated with metronidazole (120 μg/ml) showed shrinking of the cytoplasm and appetites change. Blastocystis cells after exposure to 500 μg/ml artemether showed large cytoplasmic vacuoles which appeared empty with rupture of the cell wall. Finally, our studies showed that artemether can be useful as herbal candidate for B. hominis infection therapy.

Key words: Artemether, TEM examination, Blastocystis cells, metronidazole, histopathological picture.