Chagas Disease Drug Offers Insight Into Future Potential Treatments
Researchers at the Infectious Disease Department of the Catalan Institute of Health in Barcelona, Spain, found that patients with chronic Chagas disease who were treated with ergosterol inhibitor posaconazole suffered from significantly more treatment failures than those treated with benznidazole, the current treatment standard.
The study consisted of 78 patients at 3 different health centers. It was a prospective, randomized trial, in which patients received either a low dose of posaconazole, a high dose of posaconazole, or benznidazole. The dosages consisted of 100 or 400 mg two times a day for posaconazole patients and 150 mg two times a day for benznidazole patients. The study lasted for about two months. The results of the clinical trial were published in the May 15th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
While the results showed that the drug was not successful as a treatment option for Chagas patients, researchers are optimistic. They found that enough antiparasitic activity occurred in patients treated with posaconazole to open up the possibility that future ergosterol inhibitors could be effective in treating Chagas patients when combined with other drugs.
“We did not use the PCR results as a measure of efficacy or cure but used them only as a marker of treatment failure,” study’s authors wrote. “A negative PCR result may be indicative only of the absence of circulating DNA at the moment when blood is drawn for testing. Therefore, despite the unfavorable final outcome of this treatment in our study, it is possible that ergosterol inhibitors could be useful as a partner drug in future combination therapies.”
This study was the first randomized, double-blind clinical trial in decades that has attempted to test a new commercial drug for the disease.
It is believed that 8 million people around the world have Chagas disease, which has traditionally been found in areas local to Latin America. However, the disease has recently been spreading into the US, Canada, and Europe.