New delivery systems for amphotericin B applied to the improvement of leishmaniasis treatment

• Published in: Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical
• Main Authors: Miguel Angel Chávez-Fumagalli, Tatiana Gomes Ribeiro, Rachel Oliveira Castilho, Simone Odília Antunes Fernandes, Valbert Nascimento Cardoso, Cecília Steinberg Perilo Coelho, Débora Vasconcelos Costa Mendonça, Manuel Soto, Carlos Alberto Pereira Tavares, André Augusto Gomes Faraco, Eduardo Antonio Ferraz Coelho
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical (SBMT) 2015
• Subjects: Amphotericin B; Leishmaniasis; Nanoparticles; Toxicity; Treatment; Lipid-based formulations; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1590/0037-8682-0138-2015; https://doaj.org/article/f8d70aeae8864101872ee0d579e634db

Leishmaniasis is one of the six major tropical diseases targeted by the World Health Organization. It is a life-threatening disease of medical, social and economic importance in endemic areas. No vaccine is yet available for human use, and chemotherapy presents several problems. Pentavalent antimonials have been the drugs of choice to treat the disease for more than six decades; however, they exhibit high toxicity and are not indicated for children, for pregnant or breastfeeding women or for chronically ill patients. Amphotericin B (AmpB) is a second-line drug, and although it has been increasingly used to treat visceral leishmaniasis (VL), its clinical use has been hampered due to its high toxicity. This review focuses on the development and in vivo usage of new delivery systems for AmpB that aim to decrease its toxicity without altering its therapeutic efficacy. These new formulations, when adjusted with regard to their production costs, may be considered new drug delivery systems that promise to improve the treatment of leishmaniasis, by reducing the side effects and the number of doses while permitting a satisfactory cost-benefit ratio.