Mumu

Among the horrors of war in the South Pacific is filariasis (rhymes with diocese), a mosquito-borne, hitherto incurable disease. It sometimes develops into elephantiasis, particularly of the scrotum. The number of military cases runs into the hundreds, mostly jungle-fighting marines who have been evacuated to U.S. hospitals. The Navy has described filariasis as the "hardest single thing" facing its doctors. But last week the Journal of the American Medical Association announced a drug which attacks the parasites causing the disease.

Called mumu by Samoans, filariasis develops from the worm Wuchereria bancrofti, carried by certain species of mosquitoes. Injected into the blood stream, the baby worm (microfilaria) eventually may grow nearly four inches long. It lodges in the lymph glands, where it reproduces itself. First visible symptoms are painful swellings of an arm, leg or the scrotum. Doctors have been less alarmed than troops by the disease, because even with repeated infections, less than 10% of the cases develop elephantiasis, and symptoms usually disappear after return to a temperate climate. But the disease's monstrous effects on native sufferers, the fear of possible impotency, and the fact that symptoms may break out months after the disease is contracted, have made filariasis a serious psychological problem for the armed forces.

The new treatment was developed in experiments on Virgin Islanders by Dr. Harold W. Brown, of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He gave twelve patients daily injections of an antimony compound (lithium antimony thiomalate). In all but one case, the drug destroyed all or nearly all the microfilariae in the blood in less than a month. A recheck four or five months after treatment showed no increase in the worms. Though the drug did not kill all the mother filariae in the glands, Dr. Brown thinks that repeated treatments, killing their offspring, may dispose of the mothers, too.

The drug has some toxic effects on man (vomiting, a skin rash), but Dr. Brown thinks they are not so bad as mumu.

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