A new treatment for the tropical disease leishmaniasis might be obtained from a compound of a pepper plant that Peru's native Chayahuitas people use for its anti-inflammatory properties.

The author of the research, Nicolas Fabre, of the Institute for Research and Development and the University of Toulouse in France, along with colleague Michel Sauvain and teams in France and Peru, tested in vitro the natural leishmaniasis remedies used by this people, whose members are strongly exposed to the disease.

One of the plants they used was the pepper plant called Piper sanguineispicum, a plants whose leaves are used as an anti-inflammatory.

The two researchers identified new compounds from the leaves, tested their effect on the disease, in vitro, and among these compounds they found three new caffeic acid esters, that affected the infecting form of the disease, and only showed moderate toxicity on living cells.

Fabre said that “the most interesting result is the selectivity of the activity; the antileishmanial value is nothing if compounds are toxic to cells.”

His excitement aside, the researcher is the first one to be cautious about the discovery and to say that “it is worth nothing, that these results are very preliminary and in vivo investigations are needed to confirm the interest of these esters.”

Leishmaniasis is a disease transmitted through the bite of an infected sand fly, and it affects two million people every year, with another 350 million thought to be at risk globally.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is the most common form of the disease and it manifests through sores on the skin, but the more dangerous form – visceral leishmaniasis, can attack internal organs and even cause death.

This disease is mainly present in the developing world and there are not many treatments available, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Fabre says that “current drugs are based on antimony compounds, but these present renal and cardiac toxicity.

“Other drugs such as Amphotericin B, also cause a lot of adverse effects, [and] on top of that these treatments are very expensive and unfortunately this disease affects poor countries.”

These three newly discovered compounds demand for further research in vivo, which could one day lead to an effective treatment.