University of Kansas Dec 20 2024 A breakthrough in understanding how a single-cell parasite makes ergosterol (its version of cholesterol) could lead to more effective drugs for human leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that afflicts about 1 million people and kills about 30,000 people around the world every year. The findings, reported in Nature Communications , also solve a decades-long scientific puzzle that's prevented drugmakers from successfully using azole antifungal drugs to treat