IN BRIEF (Page 19)

New hope for blindness cure

Closantel, an older drug used to treat a parasitic liver disease in animals, may prove effective at combating river blindness in humans, a major cause of infection-related blindness, US researchers say.

Transmitted by blackflies breeding along fast-flowing tropical waterways, river blindness is an eye and skin disease caused by the filaria worm, which infects more than 37 million people in Africa, Central and South America and Yemen.