in vitro study of the effect of artimisinin on promastigotes and amastigotes of leishmania major

objective: cutaneous leishmaniasis is an endemic infectious disease considered to be a crucial health problem in many countries, including iran. as such, there is a need for new medications with few side effects. in the present research we have studied the effect of artimisinin on  leishmania major (l. major) and cell death in vitro. methods: a specific number of promastigotes of l. major were grown in the presence of different concentration of artimisinin to achieve ic50 of the drug. the mtt method was applied to evaluate the cytotoxic effect of the artiminisinin on l. major. various densities of this drug were applied to study the induction of apoptosis by flow cytometry on l. major promastigotes. results: we calculated the ic50 of artimisinin to be 25 μg/mlby promastigote assay. promastigotes were incubated at 72 hours incubation with various doses of artimisinin (10, 25, 50 and 100 μg/ml). the dose 100 μg/ml showed the most apoptosis (68.16%) by annexin-v fitc. whereas the 10 μg/ml dose had the least apoptosis (12.78%). there was no change in the control group. according to mtt, the toxic effect of artiminisinin on l. major promastigotes increased with increasing drug concentration. conclusions: this study revealed that artimisinin has a little toxic effect on macrophages. according to the flow cytometry and mtt results, artimisinin can be suggested as an appropriate drug for in vivo antileishmanial study.