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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.