Could a mango flavoured pill end intestinal worms?

A new tablet being developed to cure intestinal worms has shown promising results in trials and could help eradicate the parasitic infection that affects about 1.5 billion people worldwide, researchers say.

The mango-flavored pill is a combination of two existing antiparasitic drugs that, taken together, appear to be more effective at eliminating worms.

These worms are infected through contact with food or water that has been infected through soil contaminated with worm eggs, and infections cause severe gastrointestinal distress, malnutrition and anemia.

Researchers say the pill could help overcome future problems with drug resistance and better manage the disease on a large scale.

Parasites, also known as soil-transmitted helminths (STHs), include whipworms and hookworms. They are endemic to many developing countries where sanitary conditions are poor.

Many of those affected are children and there is no preventive treatment other than better hygiene.

According to a study called “ALIVE”published in the Lancet, this new pill could help the hardest hit countries meet the targets set by the Lancet World Health Organization to eliminate the diseases.

It would be taken as a fixed dose of either a single pill or three tablets on consecutive days.

Researchers from eight European and African institutions say this would be an easy way to cure large numbers of people in mass treatment programs.

“It is easy to administer because it is a single pill,” says project leader Prof. Jose Muñoz.

“We also hope that the combination of two drugs with different mechanisms of action will reduce the risk of drug resistance in the parasites,” says Prof. Muñoz.

Once a person is infected, the parasites take root in the person’s digestive tract.

While the drug albendazole is good at treating some types of STH, it appears to be less effective at controlling other types.

In a clinical trial of 1,001 children between the ages of 5 and 18 in Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique, it was found to be more effective against more types of infections when combined with the drug ivermectin.

However, researchers said the results were inconclusive about how well it combats the nematode.

Prof Hany Elsheikha, an expert in parasitology at the University of Nottingham, said the pill could be a “significant improvement over other treatments” and could be used against multiple parasites.

“There are some challenges with existing medications … so this could be a big, big addition.”

However, he said that while the study was “promising,” it had “some gaps.”

“We don’t know whether the results would be the same in adults, older people, younger children and people in other parts of the world.”

The results of the trial were presented to regulators in Europe and Africa. Decisions are expected in early 2025.

Participants are currently being recruited for another study of 20,000 people in Kenya and Ghana.

Dr. Stella Kepha, a researcher at the Kenya Medical Research Institute who worked on the study, said the pill had “great potential to improve the health of affected communities” but there was still “work to be done” to roll out the treatment widely.