Antileishmanial activity of drug infused mini-agar plates on Leishmania donovani promastigotes.

Drug infused mini agar plates were found to be a better alternative of broth dilution method in the determination of antileishmanial susceptibility of two commonly used drugs, Sodium antimony gluconate and Amphotericin B against Leishmania donovani promastigotes. These two drugs were used here as models for antileishmanial compounds. The stability of the drugs in the stored agar plates was also tested for six months and found that they were same as fresh plates. Determination of antileishmanial susceptibility of Leishmania donovani promastigotes to compounds of screening by this method is quite inexpensive, simple to perform even in under-sophisticated laboratories of developing countries where the disease is endemic.