Photodynamic therapy: A new light for the developing world

Abstract

In one article, photodynamic therapy (PDT) was commended as the most suitable method for cancer therapy in the Developing World. PDT is cost effective and simple to use. Unlike chemotherapy, no special training is required for nurses, and no post treatment course in intensive care. No engineer, computerized dosimetry computations, or additional costs for isotope re-treatment are required, as in radiotherapy. There are no blood transfusions, or sophisticated operating theatres, as in surgery. Ironically, it is in the developing world that there appears to be very little awareness of and practice of PDT. Cancer sufferers are thus limited to chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery procedures that are relatively complex and costly, without distinctive advantage in cure or palliation. Is it possible that the low level of clinical practice in PDT in the developing world is related to the low level of articulation of what is admittedly a relatively new modality? However, this slow emergence of clinical practice in PDT when compared with advances in its developmental research was also observed in the developed world in the last two centuries or so. The purpose of this article was to advance the articulation of PDT, primarily among basic science researchers, clinicians and clinical scientists in the developing countries. It is also to advance the emerging new frontiers of the clinical applicability of the processes of photodynamic reactions in the fight against infectious disease epidemics, which are a more common occurrence in the developing world countries.

Keywords: Photodynamic therapy, developing world, photosensitizer, bacterial infection

African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(23), pp. 3590-3599