“Sleeping sickness threatens millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the people at risk live in remote rural areas where there is little access to adequate health services, and where acoziborole has the potential to revolutionise treatment for sleeping sickness,” said Dr. Antoine Tarral, Head of Human African Trypanosomiasis Clinical Program at DNDi, and lead author of the study
Geneva:
A new, single-dose oral treatment for sleeping sickness is 95 per cent effective in adults and adolescents, regardless of disease stage, and could be a key factor in eliminating disease transmission by 2030, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Developed by not-for-profit Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and Sanofi, acoziborole, unlike current treatments for sleeping sickness, does not require multiple days of treatment, hospitalisation or highly skilled health personnel, the researchers said.
Transmitted by the bite of an infected tsetse fly, sleeping sickness, or human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), is a neglected tropical disease, which can be fatal if left untreated.
The Gambiense human African trypanosomiasis (g-HAT) form of the disease is found across countries in west and central Africa with most cases in Congo.
Until 2019, treatment for patients in the earlier stage of the disease was a daily injection for seven or more days and, for patients in the later disease stage, an intravenous drip for seven days, which requires hospitalisation, the researchers said.
Patients were also required to undergo a spinal tap, where fluid is collected from the spine, to diagnose the stage of sleeping sickness to determine the most appropriate treatment, they said.
In 2019, fexinidazole was introduced, a 10-day oral drug developed by DNDi as a first-line treatment for both stages of the disease, but its administration still requires skilled staff and, often, hospitalisation.
The new prospective study looks at the efficacy of one oral dose of acoziborole in treating g-HAT.
“Sleeping sickness threatens millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the people at risk live in remote rural areas where there is little access to adequate health services, and where acoziborole has the potential to revolutionise treatment for sleeping sickness,” said Dr. Antoine Tarral, Head of Human African Trypanosomiasis Clinical Program at DNDi, and lead author of the study.
“It is administered in a single dose and is effective across every stage of the disease, thereby eliminating the many barriers currently in place for people most vulnerable to the diseases, such as invasive treatments and long travel distances to a hospital or clinic, and opening the door to screen-and-treat approaches at the village level,” Tarral said in a statement.
During the study, which recruited patients from 10 hospitals in Congo and Guinea, a single 960 mg oral dose of acoziborole was administered to 208 patients; 167 diagnosed with late-stage HAT and 41 with early or intermediate-stage g-HAT. The patients were followed up for 18 months to see if treatment was successful.
The researchers found that 18 months after treatment 95 per cent (159/167) of patients with late-stage g-HAT treated with acoziborole were cured. No trypanosomes, the microscopic parasites which cause g-HAT, were present in body fluids.