Repurposing of Amiodarone for treatment of muscle phase of experimental trichinellosis spiralis

Recently, testing existing drugs for new therapeutic purposes has been highly recommended. Trichinellosis is a parasitic infection caused by roundworms from the genus Trichinella. Treating trichinellosis is facing many challenges and offering new pharmacological therapeutics is needed. In this study, Amiodarone, the antiarrhythmic medication was repurposed for the first time for treating the muscle phase of trichinellosis in experimental mice. Thirty-five mice were used and divided as follows; normal, infected, infected, and treated with Albendazole (ALB), and the infected and treated with Amiodarone (AMD). Thirty-five days post inoculation of infection and after euthanasia; the diaphragms of all mice were subjected to histopathological examination while the whole muscle masses of the infected and infected-treated mice were subjected to digestion and examination for assessing the number of larvae per gram. Compared to ALB, AMD showed the best results in this study. A significant reduction of muscle larval burden (71.43%, versus ALB 62.36%; P <.001) and improvement of the diaphragmatic histopathological changes with a significant reduction of inflammatory infiltrates (P <.001). According to our results, AMD showed an anti-inflammatory plus antiparasitic action against the muscular phase of experimental trichinellosis. In addition, ALB, the drug of choice till now should be tested in combination with other treatments to improve its intestinal absorption and subsequently its anti-larval efficacy, plus reducing its consequential severe inflammatory reaction.