Isolation and Molecular Diagnosis of Leishmania major and Study Activity of Aqueous Extract of Plant Nigella sativa Against the Parasite In Vitro

Abstract

The current study included isolating and diagnosing the cutaneous leishmaniasis parasite from patients with Baghdad boil and the reviewers of Al Hussein Teaching Hospital in Thi-Qar province for the period from November to December 2016 and then studying the effect of aqueous extract of the plant Nigella sativa in the vitality of isolated parasite in vitro. Through the results, the isolated parasite was diagnosed depend on lesions appearance and characterization then confirm the diagnosis by KDNA- PCR which revealed that leishmania spp. was Leishmania major . In this study three different concentrations from aqueous extract of the Nigella sativa plant were used (50, 100 and 150 mg / ml), the parasite growing in NNN medium (3 replicates used)It was observed that the percentage of parasite destruction increased with prolong exposure time of the extract and increased concentration of the extract, results also exhibited that the percentage of the destruction was 100% after four hours of exposure to the concentration of 150 mg / ml which was the highly killed percentage compared to control, which was 5. 98%.