Susceptibility testing of medically important parasites

Abstract

In the last 2 decades, renewed attention to neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) has spurred the development of antiparasitic agents, especially in light of emerging drug resistance. The need for new drugs has required in vitro screening methods using parasite culture. Furthermore, clinical laboratories sought to correlate in vitro susceptibility methods with treatment outcomes, most notably with malaria. Parasites with their various life cycles present greater complexity than bacteria, for which standardized susceptibility methods exist. This review catalogs the state-ofthe- art methodologies used to evaluate the effects of drugs on key human parasites from the point of view of drug discovery as well as the need for laboratory methods that correlate with clinical outcomes.