Discovery and Impact of Ivermectin

Ivermectin was discovered in Tokyo by two scientists,

Satoshi Omura and William C. Campbell. Dr.

Omura was a golfer, and on one of his golf trips,

he picked up a sample

of soil around here, like any scientist would,

on the east coast of the Izu Peninsula.

And in this sample of soil was this bacterium.

When they took it to the lab, they found it was able to kill roundworms

in

mice. So they isolated the bacteria's active

compounds,

slightly changed its structure, and called this new compound

ivermectin.

This new drug was a big deal, and both Drs. Omura and Dr.

Campbell won a Nobel Prize for discovering it.

What was so special about ivermectin?

Well, scientists are still puzzled by how

exactly it works, but it

seems to penetrate the nervous system of parasites.

It disables their neurons, and that would basically make the

parasite dysfunction until it dies.

So in 1988, this drug was used widely in Africa to treat

river blindness. This is a very unpleasant disease caused by a

worm.

Back in those days, the World Health Organization had reported

that because

of river blindness, some 270,000

people had lost their eyesight. But thanks to ivermectin,

this disease is now on the brink of elimination.

In fact, ivermectin was so great at killing off parasites,

it was

recognized as being second to penicillin in terms of having the

greatest impact on human health. And over the

past 30 years, some 3.7 billion doses

of ivermectin were taken by humans.