Experimental Chemotherapy: A Rapid and Simple Screening Method for Drug Binding to DNA
Abstract
Histories of wars and of infectious diseases have been interwoven since the time of antiquity. In World War II, some 500,000 American servicemen acquired malaria with an attending loss of 6.6 millions of man days. During 1965, the number of American soldiers evacuated from Vietnam because of chloroquine-resistant malaria, equaled the number evacuated because of wounds. The invasion of Taiwan from mainland China, planned in 1949, had to be abandoned because of a catastrophic outbreak of schistosomiasis which the assembled troops acquired while practicing landing maneuvers on inland lakes in Fukien province. Earlier, the campaign of Napoleon in Egypt faltered because of schistosomiasis and trachoma in the expeditionary force. Drugs for the treatment of those communicable diseases against which there exists no effective immunoprophylaxis are a military necessity when the troops must be deployed in unsanitary parts of the world. The Russian Civil War (1917-1924) was accompanied by 25,000,000 cases of epidemic typhus. Today, such patients would be treated successfully with chloramphenicol or tetracyclines.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1980
- Accession Number
- ADA090397
Entities
People
- Fred E. Hahn
Organizations
- Walter Reed Army Institute of Research