For Africa, a Possible New Way to Treat Sleeping Sickness

A weakness is found in the parasite that causes the deadly disease, which infects about 60,000 people a year.

06 April 2010

The tsetse spreads sleeping sickness through its bite

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Sleeping sickness is a deadly disease that infects about sixty thousand people in Africa each year. Now scientists in Scotland say they may have found a new treatment. Their findings are in the journal Science.

Sleeping sickness is spread by the bite of the tsetse fly. The insect can carry a parasite that infects the central nervous system. First the infection causes fever, headache, itchy skin and weakness.

Then, when the parasite enters the brain, it causes more serious problems. People suffer seizures and thinking problems, and they sleep for extended periods. If the disease is not treated, it almost always kills the victim.

Paul Wyatt at the Drug Discovery for Tropical Diseases program at the University of Dundee led the study. He says the research identified a weakness in the parasite. The weakness is an enzyme called N-myristoyl transferase, or NMT. The parasite needs NMT to survive.

The researchers developed a mixture of chemicals that interfered with the performance of the enzyme. They tried it in test tubes containing the parasites. As a result, the parasites stopped reproducing.