Sleeping Sickness Drug Shows Promise

摘要

African sleeping sickness is one of the most neglected of the neglected diseases. Now, researchers have designed a compound that kills sleeping sickness parasites in the blood and the brain. After promising studies in rodents, the compound will enter human safety trials later this year. Human African trypanosomiasis, the formal name for the disease, sickens an estimated 30,000 people per year. Injected by the bite of the tsetse fly, the parasites that cause the illness first dwell in the blood and then infiltrate the brain. Treatment can be dangerous and complicated. The drug mainstay kills 1 in 20 people who take it. A newer medicine is less toxic but requires an elaborate treatment regimen.