{"id":5669,"date":"2024-01-02T20:28:16","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T02:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5669"},"modified":"2024-01-02T20:28:19","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T02:28:19","slug":"treatment-for-acute-sleeping-sickness-has-been-brutal-until-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/01\/02\/treatment-for-acute-sleeping-sickness-has-been-brutal-until-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Treatment for acute sleeping sickness has been brutal \u2014 until now"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goatsandsoda\/2024\/01\/02\/1221330301\/treatment-for-acute-sleeping-sickness-has-been-brutal-until-now\">NPR<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Acute sleeping sickness \u2013 the treatment is almost as horrific as the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But now there is encouraging news about an oral medication \u2013 one that&#8217;s also been used for chronic sleeping sickness to great success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Symptoms for both forms of sleeping sickness start with fever and aches. Then things get worse. The parasite that causes the disease will start to disrupt sleeping patterns and cause aggressiveness and psychosis \u2013 that&#8217;s how it got its name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For many years, therapy for both types would begin with a lumbar puncture to see if the parasite has invaded the central nervous system<strong>,\u00a0<\/strong>followed by intravenous injections of a drug toxic to the kidneys and an arsenic-based drug that&#8217;s toxic to the brain.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/news-room\/fact-sheets\/detail\/trypanosomiasis-human-african-(sleeping-sickness)\">Up to 10% of patients<\/a>\u00a0would die from the treatment alone. But left untreated, the acute form of sleeping sickness is almost always fatal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within the last decade, treatments for the chronic form have become much safer with the use of an oral drug called fexinidazole. But for the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/parasites\/sleepingsickness\/gen_info\/faqs.html#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20fewer%20than%20100,%2D(t%2Db%2Drhodesiense)%20).\">roughly 100 people a year<\/a>&nbsp;who get the acute form, the risky injections<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>were the only option<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/dndi.org\/press-releases\/2023\/ema-gives-positive-opinion-fexinidazole-winthrop-first-oral-treatment-sleeping-sickness-rhodesiense\/\">the European Medicines Agency has given their &#8220;positive scientific opinion&#8221; on the use of fexinidazole for the treatment of acute sleeping sickness<\/a>&nbsp;as well. That opinion is based on results from an ongoing clinical trial showing that a 10-day course of pills cures the disease in 97% of patients \u2013 and should lead to approval of the drug by countries outside of the EU.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NPR Acute sleeping sickness \u2013 the treatment is almost as horrific as the disease. But now there is encouraging news about an oral medication \u2013 one that&#8217;s also been used for chronic sleeping sickness to great success. Symptoms for both forms of sleeping sickness start with fever and aches. Then things get worse. The parasite [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":5670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emerging-infectious-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Screenshot-2024-01-02-at-21.27.14.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5671,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669\/revisions\/5671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}