The first evidence that onchocerciasis elimination is feasible with ivermectin treatment was published in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Onchocerciasis is also called river blindness because the blackfly which transmits the disease breeds in rivers; it often blinds people, as well as causing debilitating skin disease. Over 37 million people are infected, often living in poor, rural African communities. [More]

A clinical trial is being launched in three African countries of a drug that could eliminate onchocerciasis, or river blindness, one of the leading infectious causes of blindness across Africa. The drug, moxidectin, is being investigated for its potential to kill or sterilize the adult worms of Onchocerca volvulus, which cause onchocerciasis. [More]

BBC examines a campaign in sub-Saharan Africa that is helping to distribute drugs to prevent onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness - a disease "caused by a parasite that is spread from human to human by the black fly, which once flourished along river beds where there is fast-flowing water." [More]

New biotechnologies that allow scientists to quickly and accurately distinguish species based on a simple DNA analysis are being creatively deployed for the first time in the war against a major global disease. [More]

An international team of researchers led by Rodrigo Gonzalez of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala reports that the transmission of onchocerciasis or river blindness has been broken in Escuintla, Guatemala, one of the largest endemic areas in the Western Hemisphere to date to stop the transmission of the parasitic disease. [More]

Onchocerciasis is an infection caused by Onchocerca volvulus, a parasite nematode worm transmitted to humans by a species of black fly of the Simulium genus whose larvae develop in fast-flowing rivers. [More]

Findings from a new study in Zanzibar, published January 23 in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, pave the way for the World Health Organization (WHO) to recommend the mass co-delivery of three anti-parasitic drugs for the first time. [More]

Once-yearly administration of two anti-parasitic drugs to control lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) costs just $0.06 to $2.23 per person treated, making it comparatively inexpensive, according to a major new international study of treatment costs. [More]

Ivermectin, the standard drug for treating river blindness (onchocerciasis), is causing genetic changes in the parasite that causes the disease, according to a new study by Roger Prichard (McGill University, Canada) and colleagues, published on August 30, 2007 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. [More]

The World Health Organization (WHO) based Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) has adopted a new strategy for strengthening and expanding research to prevent and control 'infectious diseases of poverty.' [More]

Development of drug resistance in the parasite which causes river blindness could lead to breakouts of the disease in communities where it has been brought under control, conclude authors of an article in The Lancet. [More]

The unusual case of a woman whose symptoms of colitis emerged 27 years after she left the country in which she was infected is detailed in a Case Report in the Lancet. [More]

Onchocerciasis, river blindness or craw craw is an endemic disease in Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea. [More]

Organizers of a 20-year global effort to eliminate a parasitic infection that is a leading cause of disability have an early victory to savor: a five-year Egyptian elimination campaign has mostly succeeded, according to a new report in the March 25 issue of The Lancet. [More]

"The big three" infections AIDS, TB and malaria have caught the world's attention but other disabling and fatal infectious diseases in Africa are being ignored, say three eminent tropical disease researchers in the international health journal PLoS Medicine. [More]