Malaria remains a widespread and deadly infectious human disease, with increasing diagnostic and therapeutic challenges due to the drug resistance and aggressiveness of malaria infection. Early detection and innovative approaches for parasite destruction are needed. The high optical absorbance and nano-size of hemozoin crystals have been exploited to detect and mechanically destroy the malaria ...

which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A 33-year-old man presented with left hypochondrium pain and high-grade fever for 1 week and generalized convulsions followed by persistent unconsciousness. 2.8 mg/dL. His coagulation profile showed an international normalized ratio of 2.4, along with severe...

A recent Letter to the Editor (R. K. Haynes, D. Monti, D. Taramelli, N. Basilico, S. Parapini, and P. Olliaro, Letter, Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 47:1175, 2003) presented cogent evidence that artemisinin and its derivatives do not inhibit hemozoin formation in vitro. However, the authors misinterpret these data to conclude that “binding of artemisinins with Fe(III)PPIX is not necessary for a...

The human parasite Plasmodium falciparum enzymatically digests hemoglobin during its intra-erythrocytic developmental stages in acidic food vacuole compartments. The released heme is rapidly detoxified by polymerization into the chemically inert pigment, hemozoin. Several heme-binding anti-malarial compounds, such as chloroquine, efficiently inhibit this process, and this is believed to be the ...

Hemozoin, the black– brown crystalline byproduct from a parasite’s digestion of hemoglobin, aided the detection of malaria over a century ago when Ronald Ross won a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the transmission of malaria. Hemozoin was useful back then because little was understood of the parasite and hemozoin could be seen without a stain. For years the gold standard for diagnosing malaria...

BACKGROUND Plasmodium falciparum infection induces human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) replication and accelerates a decline in CD4(+) T-cell count. The mechanisms contributing to these interactions have not been fully elucidated. METHODS We infected peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) with HIV type 1 (HIV-1) and then cocultured them with P. falciparum-infected red blood cells (iRBCs) o...

Severe Plasmodium falciparum malaria evolves through the interplay among capillary sequestration of parasitized erythrocytes, deregulated inflammatory responses, and hemostasis dysfunction. After rupture, each parasitized erythrocyte releases not only infective merozoites, but also the digestive vacuole (DV), a membrane-bounded organelle containing the malaria pigment hemozoin. In the present s...

Background. L-buthionine (S,R)-sulfoximine (BSO) regulates the glutathione (GSH) level, which in turn exhibits remarkable regulation of several important aspects of cellular metabolism. We hypothesised that increasing the cellular levels of glutathione leads to an increased resistance to arteether, whereas decreasing these by using a GSH inhibitor increases the parasite sensitivity to arteether...