Abstract

Alkaline phosphatase releasement is an enzymatic way to evaluate the effectiveness of antiparasitic drugs in vitro however; by now, it had been apply sporadically in some cestodes and trematodes.
In this paper, we describe by the first time a cost-effective evaluation method to accurately determine larvae immobility or mortality after salt or starving stress treatment and measurement of released parasite alkaline phosphatase as an enzymatic stress marker. This method avoid tedious and time-consuming visual counting of the human parasite nematode Strongyloides venezuelensis larvae used as model. Contrary to other reports, we found that exist a linear tendency between the larvae inmobilization due to stress treatment and the alkaline phosphatase releasement in larvae stadium L3, due to parasite stress. This method could be applied for preclinical evaluation of active antiparasitic compounds in phosphatase alkaline producer’s nematodes and other parasites.

Key words: Keywords: Alkaline phosphatase, larvae mortality, Strongyloides venezuelensis, parasites, larvae immobility