Albendazole and antibiotics synergize to deliver short-course anti- Wolbachia curative treatments in preclinical models of filariasis

Significance Filarial nematode infections, caused by Wuchereria bancrofti , Brugia malayi (elephantiasis), and Onchocerca volvulus (river blindness) infect 150 million of the world’s poorest populations and cause profound disability. Standard treatments require repetitive, long-term, mass drug administrations and have failed to interrupted transmission in certain sub-Saharan African regions. A drug cure using doxycycline, which targets the essential filarial endosymbiont Wolbachia , is clinically effective but programmatically challenging to implement due to long treatment durations and contraindications. Here we provide proof-of-concept of a radical improvement of targeting Wolbachia via identification of drug synergy between the anthelmintic albendazole and antibiotics. This synergy enables the shortening of treatment duration of macrofilaricidal anti- Wolbachia based treatments from 4 wk to 7 d with registered drugs ready for clinical testing.