Improving the efficiency of malaria diagnosis is one of the main goals of current malaria research. We have recently developed a magneto-optical (MO) method which allows high-sensitivity detection of malaria pigment (hemozoin crystals) in blood via the magnetically induced rotational motion of the hemozoin crystals. Here, we evaluate this MO technique for the detection of Plasmodium falciparum ...

The role of infection in erythropoietic dysfunction is poorly understood. In children with P. falciparum malaria, the by-product of hemoglobin digestion in infected red cells (hemozoin) is associated with the severity of anemia which is independent of circulating levels of the inflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis alpha (TNF-α). To gain insight into the common and specific effects of TNF-α and h...

Digestion of hemoglobin in the food vacuole of the malaria parasite produces very high quantities of redox active toxic free heme. Hemozoin (β-hematin) formation is a unique process adopted by Plasmodium sp. to detoxify free heme. Hemozoin formation is a validated target for most of the well-known existing antimalarial drugs and considered to be a suitable target to develop new antimalarials. H...

The emergence of drug resistant strains of Plasmodium spp. creates a critical need for the development of novel antimalarials. Formation of hemozoin, a crystalline heme detoxification process vital to parasite survival serves as an important drug target. The quinoline antimalarials including chloroquine and amodiaquine owe their antimalarial activity to inhibition of hemozoin formation. Though ...

The current theories of antimalarial mechanism of artemisinin are inadequate to fully explain the observed effects. In our study, "organism-like" formation of Schistosoma hemozoin granules by attaching to and utilizing erythrocytes to form new ones was observed. This indicates that heme iron is transferred from erythrocytes to hemozoin granules during their formation. However, as a disposal pro...

Clinical diagnosis of malaria suffers from poor specificity leading to overtreatment with antimalarial medications. Alternatives, like blood smear microscopy or antigen-based tests, require a blood sample. We investigate in vivo microscopy as a needle-free malaria diagnostic. Two optical signatures, birefringence and absorbance, of the endogenous malaria by-product hemozoin were evaluated as in...

Hematological parameter changes are the most common complications in malaria. We aimed to determine the hematological parameters and hemozoin-containing leukocytes and their association with disease severity in malaria infected children aged between 1 and 15 years. A facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted at Pawe General Hospital from July 31 to December 30, 2014. Demographic and cl...

Malaria is a global disease that clinically affects more than two hundred million people annually. Despite the availability of effective antimalarials, mortality rates associated with severe complications are high. Hepatopathy is frequently observed in patients with severe malarial disease and its pathogenesis is poorly understood. Previously, we observed high amounts of hemozoin or malaria pig...

Quinoline antimalarials target hemozoin formation causing a cytotoxic accumulation of ferriprotoporphyrin IX (Fe(III)PPIX). Well-developed SAR models exist for β-hematin inhibition, parasite activity, and cellular mechanisms for this compound class, but no comparably detailed investigations exist for other hemozoin inhibiting chemotypes. Here, benzamide analogues based on previous HTS hits have...

The multi-frequency high-field electron paramagnetic resonance (HFEPR) was used to study the magnetic properties of malarial pigment hemozoin and its synthetic analogue, beta-hematin. (FeIII-protoporphyrin-IX)2 dimers containing five-coordinate high-spin FeIII, S = 5/2, are the building blocks of these pigments. The fit of EPR spectra that were acquired in an unprecedented wide range of microwa...