Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular parasite of the phylum Apicomplexa which multiplies in almost every tissue of the body as the fast dividing tachyzoite stage, before transforming into the slowly dividing bradyzoite stage that forms long lived cysts in the central nervous system, eye and skeletal muscle. Approximately 30% of the world’s population have T. gondii infection and harbor cysts in the brain and show symptoms such as encephalitis which is the only evident during immune suppression.
The combination of pyrimethamine and sulphadiazine remains the mainstay for treatment and prophylaxis of most clinical presentations of toxoplasmosis. This therapeutic regimen is not always suitable for prolonged treatment because of appearance of adverse side effects, and the potential to contribute to clinical failure by selecting drug-resistant parasite variants. There is an increasing awareness of the therapeutic potential of natural products and medicinal plants that are frequently considered to be less toxic and free from side effects than synthetic drugs.
Thymus vulgaris (thyme), locally known as Zaatar , a member of the family Lamiaceae, is widely used in folk medicine as expectorant, anti-tussive, anti-broncholitic, anti-spasmodic, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-helmenthic, carminative and have diuretic properties.
This study aimed to evaluating the efficacy of Thymus vulgaris extract on expermintaly infected mice with chronic toxoplasmosis , to overcome side effects of hazardous drugs.
Mice were classified into 5 experimental groups of 10 mice each: (GI) non
infected, non treated (-ve control) , (GII) T. gondii infected not treated mice.
mice were inoculated intraperitoneally by 0.1 ml of brain cysts suspension (1x102
tissue cysts / ml) of Me49 non-virulent strain of T. gondii. (GIII) mice were treated
by TVE 500mg/kg orally 5 days before animal infection by T. gondii cysts. (GIV)
mice were treated by TVE six weeks post-infection. (GV) mice were treated with a
combination of sulfadiazine at a dose of 200 mg/kg/day and pyrimethamine at a
dose of12.5 mg/kg/day six weeks post infection.
The result of the current study showed that there were significant effects of treatments with both TVE and sulfadiazine and pyrimethamine, exhibiting significant in vivo anti- T. gondii activity. TVE was recorded to have similar effects as sulfadiazine and pyrimethamine against T. gondii regarding both cysts count in brain and histopathologically when compared to infected control group. The histopathological changes improved and regressed to normal by using TVE and drug combination. Also, using TVE improves DNA damage in both brain and retina cells as showed by feulgen stain.
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