CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Alveolar echinococcosis is a helminthic zoonosis caused by the larval stage of Echinococcus multilocularis. Whensurgical resection of the parasite is not feasible, pharmacological treatment with albendazole is the only option.Due to the difficulties in achieving the success of treatment, it is necessary to find new drugs to improve thetreatment of this disease. In the present work, the efficacy of carvacrol alone or combined with albendazole wasevaluated against E. multilocularis metacestodes. The association of carvacrol with albendazole produced agreater in vitro effect than the compounds incubated separately. The most effective treatment was the combination of 10 μg/ml of carvacrol and 1 μg/ml of albendazole. In the clinical efficacy study, treatment of infectedmice with carvacrol (40 mg/kg) and albendazole (25 mg/kg) reduced the weight of metacestodes by 29 % and 50%, respectively; while the combination of drugs had an efficacy of 83 %. These results coincided with the tissuedamage observed at the ultrastructural level. In conclusion, carvacrol and albendazole combination enhanced theefficacy of monotherapy. This strategy would allow to improve the efficacy of the treatment without increasingthe doses of albendazole or lengthen the treatment period, reducing the occurrence of adverse effects