New treatments raise hope of cutting sleeping sickness deaths
Prospects for people threatened by one of Africa's most lethal diseases are about to be transformed by new treatments to replace arsenic-based drugs that kill some of those they are meant to cure.The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), a public-private partnership set up to find new and better medicines, has made two breakthroughs on sleeping sickness – African trypanosomiasis – its first major target. Today the UK government announced a fund of £18m to advance its work.Sleeping sickness, a disease spread by the bite of parasite-carrying tsetse flies in sub-Saharan Africa, has been one of the most grossly neglected tropical diseases. About 48,000 people died of it last year.Current treatments are old and toxic or very difficult to use. Melarsoprol, an arsenic derivative, causes the patient great pain and kills one in 20 of those who take it. Eflornithine has to be given by 56 infusions in a hospital,...
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