KARACHI, Jan 11: Patients inflicted with blood diseases and exposed to iron accumulation-related complications will have considerable relief with the successful development of an orally active and safe iron chelator at the Pharmacy Department, Kings Hospital, University of London, U.K.

Dr. M. Zafar Khan, a senior pharmacologist and member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Great Britain, told APP that the invention would be of great solace to children suffering from B-Thalassaemia or Aplastic Anaemia or Leukaemia, as at present they were relying on the painful process of drug infusion through syringes in a single stretch of eight long hours.

Iron chelator or iron chelating drugs are prerequisite for these patients to prevent excessive iron accumulation. Dr Zafar said that Prof Bob Hider of the Kings College London was heading the research team working on the design of orally active iron chelator. According to him the discovery of deferiprone a few years back had been a major accomplishment establishing the possibility to design orally active and not too toxic iron chelator for clinical use.

While compounds much more effective than deferiprone and which could also retain their bio-availability had already been identified, efforts were underway to come forward with a second generation of these orally active compounds.

Dr. Zafar mentioned that several of these new-found compounds had also been found to bind iron 100 times more tightly than deferiprone and, therefore, could be used at much lower doses.

“If were are able to use iron chelator at a lower dose, then the chances are that it will possess lower toxicity and hence will be much safer to be consumed by mouth,” he said.

He said that some of the orally active iron chelators invented by Dr Hider were in use in certain countries, but he could not recommend their use in Pakistan due to their many toxic effects.

He said that the Kashif Iqbal Thalassaemic Care Centre, of which he was also a founding member, had prepared low-cost and equally-efficient locally manufactured infusion pumps.

He said those pumps were used by different centres to facilitate infusion of desferal injections among relevant patients, particularly thalassaemics.

The pump, commonly known as the Zainab Infusion System and designed for iron chelation therapy by Fazal e Rahim, an engineer by profession and father of a Thalassaemic daughter, is meant to administer drugs automatically to save several cumbersome hours of the patient.

The pump has a dual operating system with a wide range of syringes and can be applied for efficient administration of drugs meant for anaesthesia, pain relief, thalassaemia or slow infusion of any other drug.—APP