Therapeutic Efficacy and in vivo Giardia lamblia Morphological Alterations Induced by Some Natural Medicinals

Abstract

Giardia lamblia, the causative agent of giardiasis, is a protozoan intestinal flagellate that infects humans, specially children, allover the world. The current therapeutic agents have considerable adverse effects or be contraindicated in certain clinical situations or show failure due to drug resistance. Using a mouse model, the intent of the present study was to evaluate the in vivo therapeutic efficacy of garlic plant, wheat germ agglutinin "WGA" and selenium in comparison with meteronidazole, and to declare their impact on ultrastructure of luminal trophozoites. The patent period, intensity of infection, cyst shedding and cure rate in groups treated by the natural therapeutics revealed a highly significant difference in comparison with the non-treated control and insignificant difference in comparison with metronidazole, a finding that might be beneficial at least in clinical situations where current chemotherapy is contraindicated. All of the tested therapeutics proved to be injurious to the parasite with evident morphological changes. While garlic appeared to induce changes that interfere with the progress of trophozoite motility, selenium and WGA seemed to be evidently lethal to the parasite.