Trials beginning on new medication for sleeping sickness
Aug 26, 2005 (Washington) — Clinical trials are soon to begin on a new treatment for trypanosomiasis – also known as sleeping sickness – a disease that threatens about 60 million people a year in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
The compound known as DB289 is the first new medication for the disease in 50 years, and the only oral medication that’s ever been developed, according to a new release on the trials released by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), the lead institution in the team which also includes researchers from Scotland, Kenya, England, and Switzerland.
Oral delivery of medication is important because the disease most frequently occurs in rural areas and villages not served by medical professionals capable of administering injections.
The Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is backing this undertaking in the absence of research in this area by large pharmaceutical companies, according to Dr. Richard R. Tidwell of the UNC School of Medicine.
“Despite being one of Africa’s most prevalent and economically devastating illnesses, sleeping sickness is definitely one of those that has been neglected,” Tidwell said. “For that reason, we decided to put this consortium together, and that’s why the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was very interested in supporting our work.”
DB289 has successfully undergone trials that have demonstrated its safety and effectiveness in patients with early-stage sleeping sickness. In the testing phase soon getting under way, scientists will give the treatment to hundreds of patients for the first time.
Sleeping sickness is passed from human to human by tsetse fly bites. The symptoms are fever, lymph node inflammation, impairment of the brain and nervous system in the late stages. It can lead to death without treatment.
The World Health Organization received reports of 45,000 cases of the disease in 1999. The agency says that most cases are occurring in areas where there is not reliable reporting on the occurrence of disease, and consequently estimates that the actual number of cases could be as much as 10 times higher.