ArticlePLoS neglected tropical diseases2012
Imipramine is an orally active drug against both antimony sensitive and resistant Leishmania donovani clinical isolates in experimental infection.
Article in PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 56 citations in OpenAlex.
- Tranylcypromine: a promising repurposed drug against Leishmaniases.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Leishmania protein KMP-11 modulates cholesterol transport and membrane fluidity to facilitate host cell invasion.EMBO reports · 2024Article
- Article
- Imipramine Administration inPharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Antimony resistance mechanism in genetically different clinical isolates of Indian Kala-azar patients.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2022Article
- Homology Modeling,Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2022Article
- Imipramine impedes glioma progression by inhibiting YAP as a Hippo pathway independent manner and synergizes with temozolomide.Journal of cellular and molecular medicine · 2021Article
- Preclinical and clinical progress for HDAC as a putative target for epigenetic remodeling and functionality of immune cells.International journal of biological sciences · 2021Review
- In vivo experiments demonstrate the potent antileishmanial efficacy of repurposed suramin in visceral leishmaniasis.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2020Article
- Short-Course Treatment With Imipramine Entrapped in Squalene Liposomes Results in Sterile Cure of Experimental Visceral Leishmaniasis Induced by Antimony ResistantFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2020Article
- Exploiting knowledge on pharmacodynamics-pharmacokinetics for accelerated anti-leishmanial drug discovery/development.Expert opinion on drug metabolism & toxicology · 2019Review
- The antidepressant clomipramine induces programmed cell death in Leishmania amazonensis through a mitochondrial pathway.Parasitology research · 2019Article
- Sertraline Delivered in Phosphatidylserine Liposomes Is Effective in an Experimental Model of Visceral Leishmaniasis.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2019Article
- In vitro screening of known drugs identified by scaffold hopping techniques shows promising leishmanicidal activity for suramin and netilmicin.BMC research notes · 2018Article
- Repurposing as a strategy for the discovery of new anti-leishmanials: the-state-of-the-art.Parasitology · 2018Review
- Miltefosine Resistant Field Isolate From Indian Kala-Azar Patient Shows Similar Phenotype in Experimental Infection.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Cholesterol-lowering drug, in combination with chromium chloride, induces early apoptotic signals in intracellular L. donovani amastigotes, leading to death.Journal of biosciences · 2017Article
- Imipramine alters the sterol profile in Leishmania amazonensis and increases its sensitivity to miconazole.Parasites & vectors · 2016Article
- The Use of Gene Ontology Term and KEGG Pathway Enrichment for Analysis of Drug Half-Life.PloS one · 2016Article
- Investigational drugs for visceral leishmaniasis.Expert opinion on investigational drugs · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn an endeavor to find an orally active and affordable antileishmanial drug, we tested the efficacy of a cationic amphiphilic drug, imipramine, commonly used for the treatment of depression in humans. The only available orally active antileishmanial drug is miltefosine with long half life and teratogenic potential limits patient compliance. Thus there is a genuine need for an orally active antileishmanial drug. Previously it was shown that imipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant alters the protonmotive force in promastigotes, but its in vivo efficacy was not reported. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL
findingsHere we show that the drug is highly active against antimony sensitive and resistant Leishmania donovani in both promastigotes and intracellular amastigotes and in LD infected hamster model. The drug was found to decrease the mitochondrial transmembrane potential of Leishmania donovani (LD) promastigotes and purified amastigotes after 8 h of treatment, whereas miltefosine effected only a marginal change even after 24 h. The drug restores defective antigen presenting ability of the parasitized macrophages. The status of the host protective factors TNF α, IFN γ and iNOS activity increased with the concomitant decrease in IL 10 and TGF β level in imipramine treated infected hamsters and evolution of matured sterile hepatic granuloma. The 10-day therapeutic window as a monotherapy, showing about 90% clearance of organ parasites in infected hamsters regardless of their SSG sensitivity.
conclusionsThis study showed that imipramine possibly qualifies for a new use of an old drug and can be used as an effective orally active drug for the treatment of Kala-azar.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.