Phytochemical Tocopherols, the Potential Treatment for Malaria

By Kyle J. Norton

Malaria, a mosquito-borne infectious disease caused by parasitic protozoans.

According to the statistic, malaria is one of the most common diseases in Nigeria, affecting over 97% of Nigeria's population. There are an estimated 100 million malaria cases with over 300,000 deaths per year.

Symptoms of malaria tend to occur in cycles, which correspond to the life cycle of the parasite. The most common symptoms include headaches, fatigue, muscle aches, and gastrointestinal discomforts including diarrhea.

In severe cases, patients with malaria may also experience symptoms of shortness of breath caused by fluid in the lungs and expanded abdomen caused by enlarged spleen hypoglycemia and liver diseases such as jaundice and low blood glucose.

Immune deficiency, pregnant women, newborn babies are prone to the disease if they are bitten by an infected mosquito.

Cerebral malaria is the most severe neurological complication of infection with Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

The condition is caused by coma and asexual forms of the parasite on peripheral blood smears.

Symptoms of cerebral malaria are fever, headache, body ache and progressively, delirium and coma.

Tocopherols are phytochemicals of which many have vitamin E activity, belonging to the group of Lipids, found abundantly in butter, egg yolk, milk fat, some vegetable, and seed or nut oils, etc.

On finding a potential phytochemical for the treatment of diseases associated with parasite infection, researchers examined the effect of α-TOS as an anti-malarial drug.

The study included selected C57BL/6J mice infected with P. yoelii 17XL and P. berghei ANKA, induced cerebral malaria (ECM), treated with several concentrations of α-TOS by intraperitoneal administration on 1, 3, 5, and 7 days post-infection (dpi).

According to the analysis, α-TOS treatment groups showed a significant decrease in parasitemia and improvement of the survival rate compared to a significant increase in mice infected with both parasites. 

Furthermore, the intensity of Evans blue staining associated with plasma membrane damage on brains taken from α-TOS-treated mice was weaker than that of untreated mice. 

In other words, α-TOS treatment exerted an inhibition of the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and the progression of cerebral malaria. 

Based on the findings, researchers said, " These findings indicate that vitamin E derivatives like α-TOS might be a potential candidate for treatment drugs against malaria"

Taken altogether, tocopherols may be considered a supplement for the treatment of malaria, pending to the confirmation of the larger sample size and multicenter human study.

Intake of tocopherols in the form of supplements should be taken with extreme care to prevent overdose acute liver toxicity.


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Author Biography
Kyle J. Norton (Scholar, Master of Nutrition, All right reserved)
Health article writer and researcher; Over 10.000 articles and research papers have been written and published online, including worldwide health, ezine articles, article base, health blogs, self-growth, best before it's news, the karate GB daily, etc.,.
Named TOP 50 MEDICAL ESSAYS FOR ARTISTS & AUTHORS TO READ by Disilgold.com Named 50 of the best health Tweeters Canada - Huffington Post
Nominated for shorty award over last 4 years
Some articles have been used as references in medical research, such as international journal Pharma and Bioscience, ISSN 0975-6299.

Sources
(1) α-Tocopheryl succinate-suppressed development of cerebral malaria in mice by Kume A1, Kasai S2, Furuya H1, Suzuki H. (PubMed).