Some 30 flu patients were relieved of their headaches and cured within 24 hours by a single flumamine injection. It happened when the writer, out of curiosity, tried it out on a case of cerebral form of influenza 3 Reading Garcia's reports, you could be forgiven for thinking that he had discovered the molecule himself:įlumamine was first noted incidentally during the course of biological tests of a number of biguanide derivatives on malaria patients. He is vague as to how, in 1949, he got hold of what he termed 'a new synthetic' which he called flumamine. He was treating patients suffering from influenza, as well as endemic malaria. Flu in the PhilippinesĪt the same time in the Philippines, molecules in that same biguanide class were being used by Eusebio Garcia, a locally eminent specialist in infectious diseases. Two years later, in 1947, animal studies showed Paludrine caused a slight reduction in blood glucose levels. Interestingly the right hand portion of the molecule has a distinct resemblance to galegine ( 2). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it had been incorporated in some sulfa drugs (notably sulfadiazine ( 5)) that were known to possess some weak antimalarial activity. Firstly, it was known to be a constituent of nucleic acids and associated enzyme systems. During the second world war, a team led by chemist F H S Curd at the ICI laboratories at Blackley, Manchester, decided to work on compounds derived from pyrimidine ( 4). The supply of the drug - it was imported from Java - was also inconsistent during periods of global unrest.īy the 1930s, the search was on to find alternatives to quinine for treating malaria. However it was expensive and some parasites became increasingly resistant to it. The classic treatment, and prophylaxis, for malaria was quinine, an alkaloid extracted from the bark of the South American cinchona tree. Malaria causes a characteristic recurrent severe fever, every third or fourth day, depending on the type of malarial parasite causing the illness.
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