River blindness drug losing punch
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Africa’s 20-year effort to control onchocerciasis, or river blindness, may be threatened by growing resistance to the antibiotic ivermectin, researchers reported Friday in the journal Lancet.
A team from McGill University in Montreal studied 19 communities in Ghana that had been receiving the drug.
Although the drug wiped out the disease in 99% of patients, four communities experienced a comeback of the parasite.
In two of those communities, the researchers found, the parasite’s prevalence doubled from 2000 to 2005.
