Nitroimidazole scaffold: a potential panacea for infectious diseases—a review

Nitroimidazoles are five-membered heterocyclic ring systems in which the ‘’nitro’’ group is appended to either carbon 2 (benznidazole), 4 (pretomanid) or 5 (fexinidazole) of the imidazole ring. This compound class has shown broad pharmacological applications in the field of infectious diseases, providing drug substrates and/or hits against diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, Chagas disease, sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, giardiasis, and trichomoniasis. In this review, we have summarized hits, as well as clinically approved nitroimidazole based compounds against several tropical infectious diseases of clinical relevance. With the increasing antimicrobial drug resistance, and the dire need for new anti-infective agents, this review may act as a handy resource for researchers involved in anti-infective drug discovery.