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Article: Attack on elephantiasis. Antibiotic offers weapon against tropical scourge.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- June 25, 2005
- Author:
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Of all the exotic diseases that afflict people, elephantiasis ranks among the most dreaded. The threadlike, parasitic worm that causes this lethal disease makes nests in a person's lymph system. The result is fever, skin lesions, and swelling of the legs and genitalia. In rural Africa, where many cases occur, people with the disease are "unable to carry out their livelihood and are shunned by society," says Mark J. Taylor, a parasitologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in England. Moreover, the worm, Wuchereria bancrofti, is impervious to most medications tested against it.
Taylor and his colleagues now report that a potent antibiotic called ...