The female worm grows up to a metre long and breaks painfully through the skin, releasing eggs into water once more.
The female worm produces large numbers of microscopic, active embryos called microfilariae that pass into the bloodstream of the primary host.
After fertilization the female worm deposits larvae into the mucosa and sometimes directly into the lymph vessels, from which the larvae reach the blood and are carried to all parts of the body, notably the burrows of skeletal muscles, where they reach the encapsulation stage.
Percentage adult female worm death corresponds to percentage inhibition of formazan formation.
Adult female worm viability was taken as mean % inhibition of formazan formation relative to negative control at 120 h post addition of plant extract.
Adult female worm viability was taken as mean % inhibition of formazan formation relative to negative control at 120 h post addition of the test compound.
The specific gene knockdown also resulted into death of adult male worms in addition to phenotypic deformities in female worm intrauterine stages.
An extract was considered active on the adult female worm if there was a 90%% or greater inhibition of formazan formation compared to the negative controls; or moderately active if the inhibition was 50 89 %.
Treatment of S. mansoni-infected mice with artemether at a total dose of 300 mg/kg resulted in total and female worm burden reductions of 66.7 and 90.1%, respectively, hence protecting the host from damage induced by schistosome eggs.
Treatment of S. mansoni-infected mice with artemether at 150 mg/kg reduced the total and female worm numbers by 43.3 and 54.4%, respectively, thus somewhat ameliorating hepatic granulomatous lesions compared with the infected untreated group.
Adult female worm viability was assessed by the MTT/formazan assay in which each nodular mass was placed in a well of a 48-well microtitre plate containing 500 μL/well of 0.5 mg/mL MTT (Sigma, USA) in incomplete RPMI culture medium, and then incubated in the dark at 37 °C for 30 min.
