%0 Journal Article %A Sen, Rupashree %A Bandyopadhyay, Samiran %A Dutta, Avijit %A Mandal, Goutam %A Ganguly, Sudipto %A Saha, Piu %A Chatterjee, Mitali %T Artemisinin triggers induction of cell-cycle arrest and apoptosis in Leishmania donovani promastigotes %D 2007 %J Journal of Medical Microbiology, %V 56 %N 9 %P 1213-1218 %@ 1473-5644 %R https://doi.org/10.1099/jmm.0.47364-0 %K MTS, 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethaloxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfonyl)-2H-tetrazolium inner salt %K PI, propidium iodide %K TUNEL, TdT-mediated dUTP nick end labelling %K TdT, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase %I Microbiology Society, %X A major impediment to effective anti-leishmanial chemotherapy is the emergence of drug resistance, especially to sodium antimony gluconate, the first-line treatment for leishmaniasis. Artemisinin, a sesquiterpene lactone isolated from Artemisia annua, is an established anti-malarial compound that showed anti-leishmanial activity in both promastigotes and amastigotes, with IC50 values of 160 and 22 μM, respectively, and, importantly, was accompanied by a high safety index (>22-fold). The leishmanicidal activity of artemisinin was mediated via apoptosis as evidenced by externalization of phosphatidylserine, loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, in situ labelling of DNA fragments by terminal deoxyribonucleotidyltransferase-mediated dUTP nick end labelling (TUNEL) and cell-cycle arrest at the sub-G0/G1 phase. Taken together, these data indicate that artemisinin has promising anti-leishmanial activity that is mediated by programmed cell death and, accordingly, merits consideration and further investigation as a therapeutic option for the treatment of leishmaniasis. %U https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jmm/10.1099/jmm.0.47364-0