A chemoproteomics approach has been employed to identify a kinase that could be used as a druggable target in efforts to develop new treatments for African sleeping sickness.

Two gene variants provide different levels of protection against sleeping sickness, but this comes with an increased risk of developing chronic kidney disease.

BACKGROUND The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been proposed for diagnosis, staging and post-treatment follow-up of sleeping sickness but no large-scale clinical evaluations of its diagnostic accuracy have taken place yet. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS An 18S ribosomal RNA gene targeting PCR was performed on blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 360 T. brucei gambiense sleeping sickness...

Diagnosis of sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis) is difficult because of the fluctuating levels of parasitaemia encountered in patients. In the present study we found that the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) demonstrated trypanosome infection in 20 out of 35 (57.1%) blood samples and in 21 out of 34 (61.7%) cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples collected from an area endemic for sleeping sickness i...

1. Kennedy PG. Clinical features, diagnosis, and treatment of human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). Lancet Neurol. 2013;12:186–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(12)70296-X 2. Lindner AK, Priotto G. The unknown risk of vertical transmission in sleeping sickness—a literature review. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2010;4:e783. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000783 3. Greenwood BM...

Human African trypanosomiasis, better known as sleeping sickness, nowadays ranks among the more neglected diseases in the countries of Africa where it is found. Though it still kills many people every year, it cannot compete for celebrity with such major killers as malaria and AIDS. Yet that was not always the case. A hundred years ago, sleeping sickness attracted considerable scientific resear...