Abstract

Chikezie, P. C.*, Uwakwe, A. A. and Monago, C. C.

The capacity of human HbAA erythrocytes of non malarious blood to withstand osmotic stress in the presence of five antimalarial drugs, Chloroquine phosphate, Quinine, FansidarTM, CoartemTM and HalfanTM was studied by in vitro investigations. Aqueous solutions of four increasing concentrations of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8% (w/v) of the drugs were used in this investigation. The spectrophotometric method was employed in ascertaining the osmotic fragility index of the erythrocytes. The mean corpuscular fragility (MCF) index (X ± S.D) of the control sample was 0.351 ± 0.06 g/100 ml. The MCF values of the control and test samples were compared (p <0.05). The results showed that Chloroquine phosphate and FansidarTM exhibited diminishing capacity to stabilize the red blood cell membrane in a concentration dependent manner while HalfanTM, CoartemTM and Quinine elicited increasing propensity to disrupt erythrocyte membrane integrity.