The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Pioneering technique for cattle disease control

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 06, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Pioneering technique for cattle disease control

M. Dinesh Varma

Researchers at Pachaiyappa's College discover way to track helminth parasite movement

NEW RESEARCH: L. Veerakumari, Zoology Reader at Pachaiyappa's College, explains the technique she developed to test veterinary drugs for their efficacy against parasitic infections. — PHOTO: R. Ragu

CHENNAI : A technique developed by a city college could help develop better veterinary medicines for treating helminth (parasite) infections, a major cause of productivity loss in livestock.

Researchers at the Department of Advanced Zoology and Biotechnology at Pachaiyappa's College evolved a method to track the parasite's motility, or ability to move, to assess the effectiveness of drugs against the organism.

Motility is a key parameter in the analysis of a drug's efficacy, as all effective anthelmintic medicines impair the motor activity of the parasite. Researchers used a spectroscope-like equipment to estimate the movements of the parasite. "Earlier, evaluation of parasites' motility was confined to visual observation through the microscope -- a subjective process that threw up values that were both inconsistent and imprecise," said L. Veerakumari, Zoology Reader and lead researcher for the study.

Fair indication

In their study, researchers installed an algorithm in the equipment to analyse the sample of a parasite exposed to the drug regimen. The values obtained in terms of percentage reduction in motility of the parasite provided a fair indication of how well the drug worked.

The study, funded by the Department of Science and Technology, bagged the prestigious M. S. Krishnamoorthy Award (2006), instituted by the Indian Association of Biomedical Scientists.

The worrying aspect of helminth infections for veterinary scientists and farmers alike is the compromised efficacy of anthelmintics due to indiscriminate drug use that has spawned resistance in livestock. The new technique promotes better understanding of a medicine's efficacy and sets up a platform for improved veterinary drug design by the pharmaceutical industry, said Dr. Veerakumari.

It is proposed to file patent applications through the DST for both the new methodology as well as the innovative application of the spectroscope equipment.

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