How do I find out I have African sleeping sickness?
How do people learn about this disease?
Where is all of our money going?
How has the number of infections changed over the past century?
So I have this Disease Now What
African sleeping sickness has no known vaccine and treatment is very invasive. Most patients do not realize that the are infected until the later stages when the disease has already invaded the Central Nervous system and has caused permanent neurological damage. The cause for the trypanosome parasite to avoid detection and treatment is the antigenic variation while within the human host. The antigenic variation and the thick glycoprotein casing surrounding the actual protozoan allows it to go undetected. Most drugs created to treat African sleeping sickness are to treat the early stage which consist of flu-like symptoms with the exception of skin lesions in the area of the bite. However, most individuals affected are unaware they are infected and do not seek treatment or a diagnosis. The late stage is when symptoms arise and most of the time the blood brain barrier has been penetrated and has caused permanent damage. Medicine created for late stage is very dangerous to use because it must cross the blood brain barrier and can cause more harm than good. The only treatment left consists a drug called eflornithine and arsenical called melarsoprol have been proven effective. Arsenicals are very toxic and dangerous to use where as eflornithine is not effective against battling Tbr and is very expensive. It costs roughly $300.00 US dollars to treat a single patient. If more research is based on finding a less toxic and inexpensive drug to treat the late stage it will help people be cured. Ideally, if proper screening methods were in place the original drugs for early stage would take prevalence over using the late stage and would help many more individuals and lower the mortality rate.