Table 3.

Inhibition of infection by pre-treatment of parasites

Compound	Concentration (µg/mL)	Infection percentage using pre-treated parasites	Infectiveness reduction (%)	Number of amastigotes per macrophage
Acarbose	10.0	8.7 ± 1.0	87.7	0.2 ± 0
	5.0	16.6 ± 3.0	76.6	0.6 ± 0.3
	2.5	30.1 ± 4.0	57.5	1.3 ± 0.4
	0	70.8 ± 4.2	(–)	3.4 ± 0.4
Amphotericin B	1.0	18.9 ± 2.6	73.3	0.9 ± 0.4
	0.50	28.9 ± 3.6	59.2	1.3 ± 0.4
	0.25	44.5 ± 4.0	37.1	2.3 ± 0.5
	0	70.8 ± 4.2	(–)	3.4 ± 0.4

L. infantum stationary promastigotes (5 × 10⁶ cells) were pre-treated with ACA (0, 2.5, 5.0 and 10.0 µg/mL) or AmpB (0, 0.25, 0.5 and 1.0 µg/mL) for 4 h at 24 °C. Pre-treated parasites were washed in RPMI 1640 and used to infect murine macrophages (at a ratio of 10 parasites per one macrophage) for 24 h at 37 °C in 5% CO₂. Percentage of infected macrophages, infectiveness reduction and the number of recovered amastigotes per cell were determined by counting 200 macrophages, in triplicate. Results are expressed as mean ± standard deviation