Tryparsamide

Tryparsamide, a new arsenic compound developed at the Rockefeller Institute, for the treatment of African sleeping sickness, has been used with considerable success as a remedy for paresis at the Wisconsin Psychiatric Hospital, Madison, by Dr. Arthur S. Loevenhart, professor of pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin, and Dr. W. F. Lorenz, chief of the Hospital.

Paresis, or general paralysis of the insane, is a hitherto incurable brain disease caused by the penetration of Spirochaeta pallida, the germ of syphilis, to the higher nerve centers, and has been the object of attack by many neurologists without marked success (TIME, April 28). Malaria germs have recently been used to combat it. Since 1919, 42 advanced cases were treated with tryparsamide, 21 of which are now discharged and restored to useful work, and four more have shown great improvement. Whether the cures are permanent remains to be seen.

The drug was discovered by Dr. Walter A. Jacobs and Dr. Michael Heidelberger, of the Rockefeller Institute, in 1915, after 63 distinct combinations had been found failures. It is somewhat similar in structure to arsphenamine (neo-salvarsan), the best specific for syphillis yet found, which was devised by Ehrlich, of Germany, and Hata, of Japan, after several hundred fruitless trials. Studies of the action of tryparsamide on animals were made by Dr. Wade H. Brown and Dr. Louise Pearce, of the Institute staff, and in 1920 Dr. Pearce went to the Belgian Congo, where she used it extensively in the treatment of African sleeping sickness among the natives. Her results proved it to be the most valuable drug for the treatment of this disease, which is caused by a germ called Trypanosoma gambiense, transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly, and is distinct from the disease known as sleeping sickness in temperate zones (encephalitis lethargica). Dr. Pearce is but 37 years old, a graduate of Stanford and Hopkins. She has already made a name for herself among the country's leading pathologists.