Drug hope for sleeping sickness care

NEW research on a drug used to treat sleeping sickness could lead to improved therapies for the disease.

Researchers from Edinburgh University hope to develop alternatives to the drug suramin, which has been in use for almost a century.

Suramin has several shortcomings and is effective only in early stages of infection and has to be injected, making it difficult to administer. The drug is also associated with side-effects including vomiting and adrenal gland failure.

Sleeping sickness is spread by the bite of the tsetse fly and infects people and animals in sub-Saharan Africa.

Professor Malcolm Walkinshaw of the university's School of Biological Sciences said: "By pinpointing the protein that seems to be at the heart of treating sleeping sickness and combining this with modern techniques to design drugs, we hope to contribute to improved treatments."