BRITISH soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan could be spared the dreaded Baghdad boils, thanks to researchers at a university in the region.

Hundreds of Coalition troops have suffered from the potentially deadly disease - officially called Leishmaniasis - which causes skin sores that can burst years after the original infection, causing fever, and liver and spleen damage.

Also known as orient boils, black fever and dum-dum fever, it affects 12 million people worldwide each year.

Many drugs used as treatment have toxic side effects, killing one in ten patients who turn to them.

In some regions, the parasite has become resistant.

However, Durham University academics have invented a new method of screening, raising the prospect of new, safer drugs.

Dr Paul Denny, who led the study, said: "There's a large number of British and American troops with infections and it's a real problem for them."

Dr Denny and his team, including Dr Patrick Steel and PhD student John Mina, have identified an enzyme which helps produce a part of the parasite - called a complex sphingolipid - and an inhibitor which acts against this enzyme.

They have filed a patent for the system and, if they find a funding partner to continue their work, they could quickly test thousands of compounds to see if they work against the enzyme.

Dr Denny said: "It provides a much quicker means of identifying inhibitors with the potential for drug development than is currently used."

Professor Nigel Brown, from the Science Council, which funded the work already done, said: "Leishmaniasis is an extremely damaging disease which threatens 350 million people in 88 countries around the world. This research demonstrates how important bioscience research is to developing life-saving pharmaceuticals, and should provide hope to people in affected regions."

The disease is spread by the sandfly and is endemic in India and the Middle East. It has spread to southern Europe and the southern US. Experts fear climate change may encourage it to move towards the UK.

The research is unveiled in this month's issue of Business, the magazine of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council