A group of British scientists have developed a safer way to cure sleep disease. Sleep disease is the popular name for Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT). It is a disease that is spread by tsetse fly and can be fatal if it is not cured immediately. The disease is distributed throughout the veins via liquid that surrounds human brain and enters the central nervous system.
Melarsoprol, an arsenic-based medicine, is now used to cure the disease. However, medication using this drug can hurt the patient and some patients even died during the medication. But the researchers at Glasgow University claimed they have found the way to combine that drug with siklodekstrin, a molecule that surrounds the drug so that it can be administered orally and the intestine is slower in absorbing the medication.
Professor Peter Kennedy who led the research at the Institute of Infection, Immunology and Inflammation said Melarsopol is highly effective in killing the parasites, but when it is administered through intervena it is just too fast. This is dangerous. He believed it is much safer administering the drug by controlling the acceleration of the drug through oral formulation.
Sleep disease is endemic in thirty six Sub-Saharan countries. There are sixty millions people with risk of this disease and currently at least thirty thousands people are infected. The infection can last for weeks to years before it blocks the veins leading to the brain. When this happens, there will be inflammation and swelling of the brain. If it not cured immediately, the person with the disease will die.
The research, funded by the Medical Research Council, is published online at Public Library of Science Neglected Tropical Diseases.
