Antiparasitic agents

Parasitic diseases predominantly affect the developing world because of poor sanitation, poor living conditions, and lack of medical care. The relative insulation of the developed countries has been protective until recently, when several factors have made populations worldwide potentially at risk of infection by any transmissible agent. Emigration, forced migration of refugees, increasing and rapid world travel, and increased susceptibility of immunocompromised populations, have been methods by which parasites, and quite often their associated vectors, have been imported into and have taken hold in regions previously unaffected. Health officials, clinicians, blood banks and pathologists who have not routinely encountered such diseases are, however, at the forefront in efforts to control these diseases. With regard to antiparasitic agents, the emphasis at this meeting was placed on their current increasing importance. Accompanying the greater incidence and disease spread are the withdrawal of prevention measures and vaccines, the resistance to chemotherapeutic agents and lack of awareness and vigilance in medical communities to the threats of resurgent and emerging diseases. A snapshot of these diseases was presented at the symposia. This report highlights the discovery, re-emergence, epidemiology, transmission, diagnosis and therapy of parasitic diseases. A common theme to the presentations was the emergence or re-emergence of organisms previously thought to be under control. Modern biotechnology and biochemical methods are being applied to the problems of causative agent identification and characterization. With better surveillance methods, no doubt the detection of more diseases will continue. No tremendous breakthroughs in parasite prevention, chemotherapy, or successes of antiparasitic agents in clinical trials were reported and are unlikely to be forthcoming in the near future unless greater changes are made in the research community, including the pharmaceutical industry. It was of note that no symposia were devoted wholly to parasites as such, but were directed towards the exposition of emerging pathogens, of which parasites comprise only a segment of the spectrum of causative organisms.