Chemotherapy and the immune response in parasitic infections

Abstract

There are comparatively few studies concerned specifically with chemotherapy of parasitic infections and its relationship with the immune status of the host being treated. In one sense this is hardly surprising. The disciplines of chemotherapy and immunology have developed independently, and the search for effective drugs has for the most part been an empirical process; when a compound showing some activity has emerged the tendency has been to look for analogues with even greater parasiticidal properties rather than to consider whether effectiveness of the parent compound could be improved if the immune status of the host were different. In many cases, test systems for drug development have actually been selected to reduce as far as possible the complications f an immune response. Thus acute, fatal infections are commonly used for the screens, and questions such as the level of specific resistance at the time of treatment, immunodepression by the parasite, and increased resistance to challenge following chemotherapy are generally irrelevant.