An increasingly common tropical skin disease may be treatable with anticoagulants, British researchers have reported.
The Buruli ulcers cause disfigurement and disability – and are caused by a kind of mycobacterium.
But doctors say it can be hard to persuade patients to take a course of antibiotics.
The new discovery at Surrey University shows the bacteria do their damage by causing blood clots in the skin.
Reporting in the journal PloS Pathogens, the researchers say this may mean the ulcers can be treated with anticoagulants, to break up the blood clots.
Researcher Dr Rachel Simmonds said: "This is a huge breakthrough in our understanding of the disease.
“Buruli ulcer is an emerging tropical disease, which is caused by infection with Mycobacterium ulcerans, an organism which belongs to the family of bacteria that causes tuberculosis and leprosy. Around 5,000 cases are recorded each year, the majority in poor rural communities in West Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia where the infection is thought to occur when people bath in slow running water.
“While antibiotics are currently used to treat Buruli ulcer, they take a long time to work and few people with the disease can afford to pay for extended stays in hospital. The ulcers are often painless, and as a result, early signs of infection are ignored, or thought to be a ‘curse’. Infected people, often children, are treated by traditional healers rather than modern medicine.
"We hope our research will now enable better treatment combinations that will reduce the lifetime deformity patients have to bear."
PloS Pathogens 16 July 2015
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