Sleeping sickness: time for dreaming.

For a long time, the treatment of human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) represented for clinicians a journey through time, to the sources of colonial tropical medicine. Until 2018, the drugs available (apart from eflornithine), were commercialised during the first half of the 20th century. 1 Pépin J Milord F The treatment of human African trypanosomiasis. Adv Parasitol. 1994; 33: 1-47 Crossref PubMed Scopus (279) Google Scholar The pharmaceutical industry had no financial motivation to seek new products for a disease with a market representing a few tens of thousands of cases per year, living in rural and impoverished regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Eflornithine was developed as a potential anti-cancer drug, which surprisingly also proved effective against Trypanosoma brucei gambiense. Efficacy and safety of acoziborole in patients with human African trypanosomiasis caused by Trypanosoma brucei gambiense: a multicentre, open-label, single-arm, phase 2/3 trialGiven the high efficacy and favourable safety profile, acoziborole holds promise in the efforts to reach the WHO goal of interrupting HAT transmission by 2030. Full-Text PDF Open Access