Research News

A new combination of drugs has been successfully trailed as a treatment for sleeping sickness in large scale studies in Sub-Saharan Africa. NECT, a combination treatment using the drugs nifurtimox and eflornithine were found to be as effective as the standard eflornithine therapy, but is easier and quicker to administer and can be more easily shipped to remote regions.

Fatal if untreated, sleeping sickness, or Human African Trypanosomiasis as it is sometimes known, threatens 60 million people in 36 countries and has devastated many communities in sub-Saharan Africa over the past century. It often affects working-age adults in poor and conflict-affected regions; places where people may also have to contend with other serious diseases such as malaria.

Because the initial stages of sleeping sickness often go undiagnosed, most patients are not treated until it is in its deadly late stage. Current treatment options for advanced sleeping sickness are either toxic or difficult to use in the rural, remote, and extremely poor areas where the disease persists, and problems are starting to be caused by resistance to the two available drugs. Improved treatment of sleeping sickness will also reduce the use of melarsoprol, a toxic drug which kills 1 in 20 patients.

Positive results from multi-centre, multi-country Phase III trial were presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene held in New Orleans. Speaking at the meeting, Bernard Pécoul, Executive Director of the DFID-funded Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) explained that the search for good treatments for sleeping sickness is not over: "it is still a far-from-ideal treatment because it requires infusions and trained health care staff; DNDi remains committed to further research efforts into delivering innovation that will best meet the needs of the most neglected patients."

More information on DFID support to DNDi is available on the R4D project record here.