Drug for Alzheimer's may also treat Chagas disease

Memantine, a drug used to treat Alzheimer's, can also prove effective in treating Chagas, a tropical disease, a new study has found.

The drugs currently used to treat Chagas disease, have serious side effects and limited use in those with chronic disease. However, researchers have found that memantine can diminish the number of parasites in mice infected with Chagas disease, and also increase the survival rate of the animals.

Chagas can be divided into acute and chronic phases, with the clinical phase causing heart, esophagus or intestinal symptoms.

The two drugs that have been used to treat Chagas for the last 50 years -nifurtimox and benznidazole are highly effective in the acute phase but used sparingly in the chronic phase due to serious side effects that occur with long-term treatment.

Researchers, in this work, studied memantine, which works on the central nervous system of animals but has also been shown to kill protozoa.

They first studied the effect of different concentrations of memantine on cultured macrophages -- a type of white blood cell -- that were infected with T. cruzi. Next, they tested the drug in T. cruzi-infected mice.

They found that memantine reduced the number of T. cruzi-infected macrophages in a dose-dependent way; more drug led to a greater reduction in the infection.

In mice with Chagas disease, memantine lowered levels of the parasite by 40 per cent and increased survival rates from 7.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent.

Not only this, but the mice treated with memantine also had 35.3 per cent lower parasite levels in their hearts compared to control animals.

"All these findings point memantine as an interesting starting point for the development of an optimized alternative therapy for Chagas disease," the researchers suggested.



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Novel drug proves effective against neglected tropical diseases

Researchers have developed a novel drug with the potential to kill a bacterium causing two of the most neglected tropical diseases that lead to blindness and severe disability and affect over 157 million people globally. River blindness is a disease caused by a parasitic worm -- Onchocerca volvulus -- that affects the skin and eyes of people leading generally to blindness, while elephantiasis refers to a parasitic infection that causes extreme swelling in the arms and legs.

The team showed that the drug called AWZ1066S is based on a molecule and is effective in killing Wolbachia the bacterium, which is behind the diseases.

Elephantiasis is caused by a Wolbachia-dependent parasitic worm similar to the one that causes river blindness. Thus, a cure for one could result in a cure for the other.

The new drug which can be taken orally does not upset the gut biome and also shortened the time-scale of treatment from weeks to days, as against antibiotics which is a long treatment process, lasting up to six weeks, the researchers said.

"Our team has already shown that removing the bacteria with antibiotics results in the death of the worm, but until now we were unaware of how the bacteria protected the parasite in the first instance," said a lecturer.

The team found that Wolbachia bacteria inside the worm acts as a "disguise" for the parasite, resulting in the immune system reacting to it in an ineffective way.

The bacteria protect the worm from the body's natural defences, but once the bacteria are removed with antibiotics, the immune system responds appropriately, releasing cells, called eosinophils, that kill the worm.

The findings showed that AWZ1066S has a faster kill rate compared with other known antibiotics tested against Wolbachia in vitro.

It can achieve maximum reduction of Wolbachia just after a day of drug exposure compared with the other antibiotics tested. Currently, there is no vaccine for river blindness, but if a candidate could be identified this may help boost the immune system ahead of antibiotic treatment and reduce the length of time patients have to take the drug, the lecturer said.

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