Sleeping sickness discovery

waltky · Mar 31, 2010

Granny thinks dat what Uncle Ferd got...

Sleeping sickness 'breakthrough'
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 - Scientists identify a potential treatment for sleeping sickness, which infects about 60,000 people in Africa a year.

British and Canadian experts say drugs could attack an enzyme the parasite causing the illness needs to survive. They say the orally-administered drug could be ready for human clinical trials in about 18 months. The disease, spread by the bite of a tsetse fly, is caused by a parasite attacking the central nervous system. It has similar symptoms to malaria, making it difficult to diagnose. Left untreated, it moves to the spinal column and brain, resulting in mental confusion and eventual death.

Fatal side effects

The "breakthrough" came at the University of Dundee in Scotland, where scientists were funded to research diseases neglected by major drugs companies. Professor Paul Wyatt, director of the programme, said: "This is one of the most significant findings made in recent years in terms of drug discovery and development for neglected diseases." He said the research, published in the journal Nature, represented "significant strides" in the development of a full blown drug against the disease.

The World Health Organization estimates there are between 50,000 and 70,000 cases of the disease a year, with a further 60 million people at risk of infection. The research in Dundee was backed by partners at the University of York in England and the Structural Genomics Consortium in Toronto, Canada. The two drugs currently available to treat sleeping sickness both have associated problems. One is arsenic-based with side effects that kill one in 20 patients and the other - eflornithine - is costly, only partially effective and requires prolonged hospital treatment, the scientists said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/africa/8597774.stm
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waltky · Jan 27, 2012

Granny says dat what Uncle Ferd got - anytime there's work to be done Ferd gets sleepy an' takes a nap...

Scientists Develop Tool to Unmask Sleeping Sickness Resistance
January 26, 2012 - A special genetic screening technique is shedding new light on why drug treatment often is ineffective against a dreaded tropical disease called sleeping sickness. The work could lead to the development of new and better drugs to control this often fatal illness.

African sleeping sickness is caused by a parasite called Trypanosoma brucei that is transmitted by the bite of a tsetse fly. Left untreated, the disease attacks the central nervous system and is often fatal. Sleeping sickness, or trypanosomiasis, is endemic throughout sub-Saharan Africa. It killed an estimated 48,000 people in 2008. Experts say trypanosomiasis cases are largely underreported, so the death rate could be higher. There are five drugs used to treat African sleeping sickness, but little is know about how and why they are effective, or how the parasite has managed to develop resistance to the drugs.

An older drug, called melarsoprol, is a highly toxic arsenic-based compound that can cause symptoms of arsenic poisoning - convulsions, fever, loss of consciousness, nausea and vomiting. But because sleeping sickness can be a lethal illness and because some of the other drugs are so expensive and difficult to administer, melarsoprol continues to be used to treat trypanosomiasis patients. David Horn is a molecular biologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who led the effort to find the source of the parasite's resistance to existing treatments.

By understanding resistance, we can actually maybe develop tests for resistant parasites and that can guide the intervention strategies that are used in a particular patient, Horn said. The single-celled trypanosome contains 7,000 genes. Researchers used a special technique that switched off each gene individually. That enabled them to find 50 genes that produce proteins associated with the parasite's drug resistance.

Horn says the researchers immediate goal was to understand how the protozoan developed that resistance. In time, Horn says, the research could lead to the development of new drugs using the same mechanisms or pathways that render existing African sleeping sickness drugs ineffective. If we understand how the current drugs work, we may be able to exploit that information to make new drugs that exploit similar pathways, Horn said. An article on drug resistance in the treatment of African sleeping sickness is published in the journal Nature.

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Sleeping sickness discovery

waltky Well-Known Member

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