In vitro study of parasitemia determination of alkaloids from S. tuberosa Lour by flow cytometry in comparation with optical microscopy

Parasitemia is the quantitative content of parasites in the red blood cells, its indication of level of an active parasitic infection in human. Among the methods have been used for counting number of Plasmodium are optical microscopy (OM) and flow cytometry (FCM).The thin blood smear is stained by Giemsa for OM and DNA fluorescent stained detection for FCM. Croomine, epi-croomine and tuberostemonine are alkaloids isolated from the roots of Stemona tuberosa. The parasitemia of their alkaloids were determined in vitro using their methods above at 0.01; 0.1; 1 and 10 ppm concentrations, respectively. The fluorescent for DNA stain is used propidium iodide. The statistical analysis showed that the parasitemia determination on the two methods were almost similar.