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Transcript
African Sleeping Sickness: Drugs for Disease or Beauty? Beth Bachert Many of the emerging infectious diseases we study have their roots in poor, undeveloped countries whose access to healthcare and education is limited, and where unsanitary conditions like no clean water allow the spread of deadly diseases such as Trypanosomiasis, or African Sleeping Sickness. An estimated 300,000- 500,000 people suffer from the disease with over 66,000 deaths a year, and many of these people live in the 36 countries of Africa that are known to inhabit the disease. African Sleeping sickness is caused by Trypanosoma brucei, a protozoan that enters its victims through the bite of an infected tsetse fly. Human African Trypanosomiasis can be caused by two different types of Trypanosoma, Trypanosoma brucei gambiense and Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense. Both forms cause severe damage to the central nervous system but T.b.g represents 90% of all cases and is found in western and central Africa while T.b.r. represents 10% of cases and is found in southern and Eastern Africa. The first stage of infection may range from asymptomatic to flu-like symptoms such as fever and headaches, but the disease often goes unnoticed until it is too late, since symptoms may be nonspecific and testing for the disease involves money which many of the doctors in Africa don’t have. As its name suggests, sleeping sickness causes disturbance of the sleep cycle, along with confusion, poor coordination, and hallucinations in the second stage of the disease. Finally, the victims sink into lassitude, then fall into a coma and in many cases die. Currently, there is no vaccine for Human African Trypanosomiasis, but there are a few drugs being used to treat the disease including Melarsoprol, developed in the 1940’s, which is arsenic in propylene glycol. Eflornithine is also used to treat the disease and has been said to be able to pull the dying out of comas, like a kind of miracle drug. Interestingly enough, eflornithine is the main ingredient in Vaniqa, a hair removal cream for women. The company Sanofi-Aventis produced eflornithine in the hopes of treating cancer, but stopped producing it until there was such a high demand for the topical form of the drug that emerged in Vaniqa. Supply of eflornithine was running very low, and only after being accused of catering to the rich did Sanofi-Aventis create an injectable form of the drug which is now used intravenously on patients with African Sleeping Sickness. Fexinidazole, another new drug, is also hoped by doctors to treat the disease.