Projekt

Filarial infections, such as onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis, are major diseases in sub-Saharan Africa associated with poverty, with some 80 million infected people. They are caused by thread-like worms transmitted as tiny larvae by flying insects and living for many years in the human body. New options for treatment have focused on Wolbachia endobacteria, living inside the worms providing them with metabolites essential for survival. There- fore, antibiotics like doxycycline that kill the bacteria also kill the worms. The consortium of scientists from three African countries and from Germany has demonstrated that doxycycline also improves major disease burdens of lymphatic filariasis, lymphoedema (swelling of limbs) and hydrocele (swelling of the male scrotal area). The role Wolbachia play during worm transmission in insects was also analysed. In the next funding period, this knowledge will be transfered further into the treatment in rural areas, hoping to circumvent prohibitively costly hydrocele operations and to prevent the development of lymphoedema - also the type caused by walking on silica soil called podoconiosis - altogether. Analysis of the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of altered lympha- tics will be performed, and techniques will be transferred to the African labs.

• Prof. Dr. Achim Hörauf

  Universitätsklinikum Bonn
  Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie,
  Immunologie und Parasitologie
  Bonn
  

• Dr. Kenneth Pfarr

  Universitätsklinikum Bonn
  Institute für Medizinische Mikrobiologie,
  Immunologie und Parasitiologie
  Bonn
  

• Dr. Sabine Specht

  Universitätsklinikum Bonn
  Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie,
  Immunologie, Parasitologie
  Bonn
  

• Prof. Dr. Ohene Adjei

  Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research
  in Tropical Medicine (KCCR)
  School of Medical Science (SMS)
  Kumasi
  Ghana
  

• Dr. Alexander Yaw Debrah

  Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
  Technology
  Faculty of Allied Health Sciences
  Department of Medical Laboratory Technology
  Kumasi
  Ghana
  

• Dr. Samuel Wanji

  University of Buea
  Department of Life Science
  Buea
  Kamerun (Cameroun)
  

• Dr. Williams Makunde

  National Institute for Medical Research
  (NIMR)
  Bombo Research Station
  Tanga
  Tansania (Tanzania)