E-DRUG: Calls for fast access to sleeping sickness drug
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Trypanosoma brucei, the parasite causing sleeping sickness
Julie Clayton
10 January 2007
Source: SciDev.Net
www.scidev.net/news
Preliminary results from a sleeping sickness treatment trial have been
so overwhelmingly positive that doctors working in two African nations
want the combined medication available as soon as possible.
And more patients - beyond the number needed - are being enrolled on the
trial in order to make the treatment available.
Victor Kande, director of the national control programme for the disease
in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), says that he would like more
patients to benefit from the treatment by enrolling in the trial before
it is completed next year.
"The DRC is encouraging people to be enrolled under the ongoing clinical
trials as the results to date have been so encouraging for the new
treatment," says Kande. "After sufficient documentation, the DRC will be
ready to recommend it as a treatment accessible to all."
The trials test the effectiveness of combining two drugs, eflornithine
and nifurtimox, against sleeping sickness. Trials began in
Congo-Brazzaville and have since expanded to three sites in the DRC and
two in Uganda.
Mid-way results, after 18 months follow-up on the first 103 patients
enrolled at the Congo Brazzaville site, have impressed the National
Programme for Sleeping Sickness Control in the DRC, who wish to increase
access.
Without being enrolled in trials, patients have no access to nifurtimox
as it is only licensed for use against Chagas disease, a related
parasitic infection. As a result, extra patients are being enrolled.
According to Girardo Priotto of Doctors Without Borders, "The situation
is so desperate in the field that we are not happy with two more years
of waiting, so we are looking for ways of making this treatment more
available earlier."
Nifurtimox is donated free to the World Health Organisation (WHO) by
pharmaceutical company Bayer. But without further scientific evidence
the WHO will not agree to its use for sleeping sickness. Other studies
have also supported the use of nifurtimox-containing combination
therapies for sleeping sickness.
Thousands of people each year are diagnosed with advanced-stage sleeping
sickness, which is fatal if not treated. Current treatment, with the
drug melarsoprol, itself causes the death of around six per cent of
patients. In addition, some patients are also resistant.
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