Evaluating the ability of natural tea extracts to act as an anti-parasitic

Toxoplasma gondii has a wide range of hosts including humans. One in three people are infected, but most do not know since we have an immunome system. The parasite converts to its slow glowing bradyzoite form leaving infection individuals chronically infected. However, if individuals become immunocompromised by transplant, HIV, cancer, the parasite can convert to its rapidly growing tachyzoite form and cause disease. The current treatments contain harsh side effects, high costs and low availability. Indavudles with sulfa allergies are limited on anti-toxo drugs. Because of all the previous information, there is a huge current need for better treatment options for toxoplasma. Most anti-parasitic were discovered as natural product extracts such as chloroquine (malaria and toxoplasma) and artemisinin (malrai) as teas and chewing on the cinchona bark. In order to streamline anti-parasitic drug discovery, we hypothesis that over-the-counter teas be used to quickly identify possible natural products as anti-parasitic. To test hypothesis, we are using the two known teas which contain chloroquine (cinchona back) and artemisinin (wormwood) as controls in Toxoplasma and an unknown dandelion root, which has shown to contain anti-inflammatory properties.