A mission to conquer TB and sleeping sickness in developing nations
Developing reasonably priced, easy-to-use diagnosis kits that can swiftly and accurately detect infectious diseases in developing countries has become the main mission of Chie Nakajima and Kyoko Hayashida, as they seek to alleviate some of the hardship endured by poverty-stricken people.
“We have developed such kits for patients in remote regions where there is no electricity or running water, let alone expensive medical equipment needed to make a diagnosis,” said Nakajima, whose research focuses on tuberculosis (TB). “Poverty provides the conditions for TB to spread. If developing countries become more affluent and can provide better nutrition for people, this disease can be eradicated. We are simply helping patients until their economic circumstances improve.”
Nakajima is developing diagnosis kits to detect TB, which causes over 4,000 deaths daily worldwide. Her main target now is multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB that does not respond to at least isoniazid and rifampin, two powerful anti-TB medications. Multidrug-resistance emerges due to the mismanagement of TB treatment and person-to-person transmission. MDR-TB accounts for 3.3 percent of all new cases and has been reported around the world.
Hayashida, meanwhile, is developing a diagnosis kit to detect human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), also known as sleeping sickness. This disease, which is endemic in 36 sub-Saharan African countries, is caused by protozoan parasites belonging to the genus Trypanosoma and transmitted by the tsetse fly. The fly acquires its infection from infected humans or animals.
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Source: Hokkaido University