Question: Can flesh-eating parasites be cured from people that have it.

Tim Downing answered on 17 Nov 2012:

Hi JF4567,

Yes parasites can be killed in infected people, but not always. I study what’s called visceral leishmaniasis. Visceral means that it spreads to internal organs – so for example parasite samples for testing are taken from the patient’s bone marrow and pancreas (beside the stomach). This is why the disease is so severe. This visceral form of leishmaniasis kills 51,000 people each year, and infects millions. It is the worst form – some leishmania just infect people’s skin (“cutaneous leishmaniasis”) or nose area. These milder forms are bad but are not usually fatal.

So in people with the visceral type, drug therapies are used to cure them. Unfortunately, tropical disease research is not well-funded, and so the drugs used are borrowed from those used in other areas. For this reason, patients can use antibiotics that are designed for bacteria, or anti-fungal chemicals, or even anti-cancer drugs. But leishmania parasites are different to bacteria, fungi and cancers because their biology is different. So sometimes the drugs work, sometimes not. This is major problem and is a motivator for me and many other researchers around the world.

Tim