Leave antiparasitic drugs just once a year could be enough to stop the spread of tropical parasite that causes elephantiasis of the deformity disease. The spectacular results, reported in December 5 number of The New England Journal of Medicine , suggest that a global campaign underway to eradicate the pest could be very successful.
Throughout the tropics, wired to cause big problems. They damage the lymphatic systems of tens of millions, causing painful limbs and genitals and swollen grotesquely in some people. Infection occurs years before the onset of symptoms, when mosquitoes transmit thousands of filaria larvae in the blood. Some of the larvae penetrate nodes and lymph vessels, where they can turn into thread-like worms that churn out up to 12,000 larvae per day. Mosquitoes that feed on an infected person continues the cycle.
Not good treatments exist for advanced elephantiasis but health workers learned in the 1980s only one annual dose of diethylcarbamazine antiparasitic: blocked blood larvae levels. In 1997, the World Health Organization launched a global campaign to eradicate the disease. As health workers were preparing researcher in tropical diseases James Kazura Case Western School Reserve University of Medicine in Cleveland, Moses Bockarie of Papua New Institute Guinea Medical Research in Goroka, and their colleagues began to give annual dose of diethylcarbamazine and other antiparasitic drug, ivermectin, residents of 14 remote villages in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
The mass treatment strategy worked like a charm. After 4 years, the percentage of people infected with the larvae dropped from 47% to 1% in moderately affected villages, and 77% to 5% in villages heavily affected. local mosquitoes has also become less contagious mosquitoes biting had 97% fewer larvae. The percentage of infected 5 years children fell eightfold 5%. And most surprisingly, the annual drug treatment, which is designed to prevent new infections, elephantiasis even reversed in many patients.
"The study was terrific," says researcher Eric Ottesen of tropical disease Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta. It represents the first "proof of principle," he said, that give annual salaries of drugs to all community members could sufficiently reduce infection levels to make the peter disease for good.
Related Sites
Papua New Institute -Guinée, medical research
Background on lymphatic filariasis global Alliance for ending lymphatic filariasis
Background of lymphatic filariasis from the World health Organization
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