X-Nico

6 unusual facts about African trypanosomiasis


African trypanosomiasis

The first effective treatment, atoxyl, an arsenic-based drug developed by Paul Ehrlich and Kiyoshi Shiga, was introduced in 1910, but blindness was a serious side effect.

Two independent variants of the APOL1 gene found in African haplotypes carrying signatures of natural selection have been shown to confer protection against the acute version of sleeping sickness caused by T. b. rhodesiense, while at the same time increasing risk of kidney disease when inherited from both parents.

Alan Fairlamb

Professor Alan Fairlamb, and his team study the protozoan parasites causing three different diseases - sleeping sickness, Chagas disease and leishmaniasis.

Elodie Ghedin

Her work focuses on the molecular biology of the parasites that cause diseases such as leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness, Chagas disease, elephantiasis, and river blindness.

Max W. Kimmich

He specialized in anti-British propaganda films, e.g. My Life for Ireland in 1940/1941, and Germanin from 1942, which portrays scientists developing a medicine against sleeping sickness.

Montane vole

Montane voles have also been used in the laboratory in studies of African sleeping sickness, since they suffer similar symptoms to humans when infected with the parasite.


FĂ©lix Mesnil

Member of the French Commission on sleeping sickness, he worked for the organisation of the mission in French Equatorial Africa.

John Lancelot Todd

In 1903 Todd and Dutton accepted an invitation by King Leopold II of Belgium to research the connection between trypanosoma and sleeping sickness in the Congo Free State.

Kids for World Health

Kids for World Health was founded in 2001 at Chatsworth Avenue School, in Larchmont, New York by a then 3rd grade class who were motivated after watching a CBS film from "60 Minutes" on the Southern Sudan Sleeping Sickness Program in 1994.

Sleep disorder

Sleeping sickness - a parasitic disease which can be transmitted by the Tsetse fly.


see also

Sleeping sickness

Animal trypanosomiasis, also known as nagana or animal African trypanosomiasis