Washington, Aug 11: Scientists in China have developed an experimental drug that appears to be effective in killing parasitic roundworms.

Working with researchers in China, biologists at UC San Diego have discussed tribendimidine, which was developed by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Shanghai and has not yet been approved for human use.

Recent clinical trials in China and Africa have found the drug to be effective in humans against some roundworm parasites, such as hookworms.

"For practical reasons, only one drug, albendazole, is now widely used in administering single-dose treatments to large populations," said Raffi Aroian, a professor of biology at UCSD who headed the research effort.

"But because of the enormous numbers of people that need to be treated and the necessity of repeated treatments due to high re-infection rates, the development of resistance to albendazole is a serious threat to large-scale de-worming efforts," Aroian added.

"We are studying this Chinese drug, tribendimidine, that clinically appears to be as good as albendazole," he added.

The researchers suggest that tribendimidine could be effectively used in areas where parasites are likely to or have already developed a resistance to albendazole.

They said tribendimidine could also be combined with albendazole to increase the effectiveness of killing parasitic roundworms, since both drugs have different biological killing mechanisms.

"Tribendimidine is not just a little bit different from albendazole. It's in an entirely different class of drugs. The fact that tribendimidine is different from albendazole, but has the same level of effectiveness, and is in the same class as pyrantel and levamisole should increase people's comfort level in using this new drug," said Aroian.

The study has been published in the current issue of the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.