{"id":21703,"date":"2021-11-09T00:45:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=21703"},"modified":"2021-11-08T08:51:50","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T03:06:50","slug":"vital-new-insights-into-deadly-african-sleeping-sickness-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/vital-new-insights-into-deadly-african-sleeping-sickness-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Vital new insights into deadly African sleeping sickness disease"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A newly published extensive body of research into Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), also known as sleeping sickness, has revealed new insights into the deadly parasitic disease that threatens the lives of millions of people in 36 sub-Saharan African countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Led by\u00a0Professor Peter Kennedy\u00a0CBE\u00a0in\u00a0the University of Glasgow and published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, the\u00a0research project has found evidence that\u00a0questions\u00a0our current understanding of sleeping sickness as a\u00a0two-stage disease \u2013 early and late \u2013\u00a0with\u00a0direct impact on how we should\u00a0both\u00a0diagnose and treat patients with the fatal disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By using\u00a0a\u00a0mouse\u00a0model\u00a0of sleeping sickness to better understand how the disease develops,\u00a0the\u00a0researchers have been able to show that\u00a0a range of host genes controlling the development\u00a0of\u00a0central nervous system\u00a0disease are activated\u00a0much earlier than previously thought, and earlier than the development of neurological features of the disease.\u00a0These crucial findings\u00a0could\u00a0explain why neurological features may occur relatively early in the disease\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something that goes against the classical two-stage disease\u00a0understanding \u2013\u00a0and may\u00a0also\u00a0explain why parasites can enter the\u00a0central nervous system\u00a0so early after initial infection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sleeping\u00a0sickness is a major killer disease of sub-Saharan Africa which puts\u00a0around 70\u00a0million people at risk in\u00a0sub-Saharan\u00a0African countries. Transmitted by tsetse flies when\u00a0they bite humans to consume a blood meal, and caused by unicellular protozoan parasites called trypanosomes, sleeping sickness\u00a0is invariably fatal if untreated or inadequately treated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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PHOTO: AHO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Currently, sleeping sickness is understood to have two stages: the early, stage 1, or haemo-lymphatic stage, which is when treatment is effective and relatively non-toxic; the subsequent late, stage 2, or encephalitic stage, when, sadly, current treatments are toxic and can be complex to administer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to\u00a0the\u00a0WHO criteria, the stages\u00a0of\u00a0sleeping sickness\u00a0are\u00a0based on the presence of\u00a0a defined amount of\u00a0white blood cells in the cerebrospinal fluid.\u00a0However,\u00a0different groups of physicians\u00a0in\u00a0Africa\u00a0use different staging criteria and there\u00a0remains\u00a0no clear consensus\u00a0as\u00a0to what constitutes stage 2 disease. Recent studies have reported the occurrence of neurological, or\u00a0late-stage features in African patients who appear to have\u00a0no or few cells in the\u00a0cerebrospinal fluid, which would otherwise\u00a0categorize their condition as\u00a0an early-stage disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Peter Kennedy,\u00a0a senior and corresponding\u00a0author\u00a0of the study from the University of Glasgow\u2019s\u00a0Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology,\u00a0said: \u201cOur work offers important new insights into this fatal disease, and has\u00a0potential\u00a0implications for not only our understanding\u00a0the nature\u00a0of sleeping sickness, but our treatment of patients when diagnosed with it as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFinding that host genes controlling the development of central nervous system disease are activated much earlier than previously after initial infection, calls into question the basis of dividing the disease into distinct early and late stages, and indicate that the disease development is complex and depends on a wide range of interacting factors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study, \u2018Microarray profiling predicts early\u00a0neurological and immune phenotypic traits in\u00a0advance of CNS disease during disease\u00a0progression in Trypanosoma. b. brucei infected\u00a0CD1 mouse brains\u2019 is published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A newly published extensive body of research into\u00a0Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), also known as sleeping sickness, has revealed\u00a0new insights\u00a0into\u00a0the deadly parasitic disease\u00a0that threatens the lives of\u00a0millions of\u00a0people in\u00a036\u00a0sub-Saharan African countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",1000,660,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness-200x200.jpg",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness-606x400.jpg",606,400,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness-768x507.jpg",750,495,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness-675x446.jpg",675,446,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",1000,660,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",1000,660,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",1000,660,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",864,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",600,396,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",600,396,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness-760x490.jpg",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness-550x360.jpg",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness-95x65.jpg",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",640,422,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",96,63,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/sleeping-sickness.jpg",150,99,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Health<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}