Ninety-one patients in Bihar, India, with symptoms of the disease received a low dose drug either as a single infusion or as once daily infusions for five consecutive days. Patients were examined daily until 14 days after the last infusion and monitored for six months after treatment.
The treatment cured 92% of patients at a cost of $519 per patient. This is more affordable than current treatment but still too high, say the authors. If proved effective in larger trials, drug companies will have to cut prices for the potential benefits to be realised, they conclude.
This is good but tantalising news for patients, many of whom are landless peasants, writes Diana Lockwood in an accompanying commentary. This treatment remains an extremely expensive drug that no patient or health service in the developing world is ever going to be able to buy, and there are no patient activists to pressurise the manufacturer into providing the drug at an affordable price, she concludes.