Abstract
Pediculosis is an infestation of the scalp caused by Pediculus humanus capitis, known as lice, which affects thousands of people throughout the world. Disease control is achieved by topical insecticides, whose indiscriminate use has led to the emergence of resistant populations of lice. Melia azedarach L. (Meliaceae) is an Asian tree that is found in Brazil, where it is popularly known as cinnamon or santa-bárbara. This study aimed to evaluate a pediculicidal treatment, made from a hydroethanolic extract of M. azedarach, and to study the effect of extraction solvents (ethanol and water) on insect mortality. The chemical composition of crude extract was studied by gas chromatography, identifying 32 methyl esters of fatty acids, with esters of heneicosanoic, palmitic, and arachidic acids present in greatest abundance. The 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra suggested the presence of flavonoids and terpenes. Quercetin-3-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (1) and quercetin-3-O-β-d-glucopyranosyl-(1 → 6)-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (2) were isolated from the extract. The bioassay of pediculicidal activity shows that the M. azedarach extract had a pediculicidal activity, inducing the death of all lice faster than 1 % permethrin, a topical insecticide commonly used to control lice.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Coordenação de Pessoal de Ensino Superior (CAPES) for providing a Master’s degree scholarship for João Ricardo Rutkauskis. We also thank the directors, employees, and parents of children in public institutions of child education in Cascavel for their cooperation with collection of the parasite and to the Universidade Estadual de Maringá (UEM) for performing the NMR and GC analyses.
Compliance ethical standards
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration and not been published previously. No data have been fabricated or manipulated.
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants in this work were in accordance with the ethical standards of institutional and national research committees in Brazil and with 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The research was submitted to appreciation of Humans Ethics Research Committee from UNIOESTE, PLATAFORMA BRASIL, ethical protocol CAAE No. 15643613.6.0000.0107; Opinion 322.307, approved on 7 July 2013.
This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants in the study.
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Rutkauskis, J.R., Jacomini, D., Temponi, L.G. et al. Pediculicidal treatment using ethanol and Melia azedarach L. Parasitol Res 114, 2085–2091 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-015-4394-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-015-4394-2