Sleeping Sickness: Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment
What are the symptoms of the disease?
West African Trypanosomiasis
- Start with an incubation period (in which there are no symptoms yet, but the parasite is present) that lasts from days to months.
- At the site of the bite can cause local injury of several centimeters in diameter, with redness and swelling and sometimes ulcerated or infected. The lymph nodes are swollen area.
- Later, the parasites spread by blood and a fever, malaise, weight loss, headache, muscle and joint aches and sometimes a rash of spots on the skin and itching.
- After months or years causes central nervous system and may have been confusion, drowsiness, progressive dementia, paralysis, convulsions and eventually coma and death.
- In children the disease is less common, but tends to be more acute.East African Trypanosomiasis
This form is similar to the West, but is more severe and more rapid evolution. Death often occurs within months, if not treated early. You can also place a severe impairment of heart, which can be fatal even before it has produced central nervous system.
What can be done to prevent this disease?
Unfortunately there is no vaccine and chemoprophylaxis is generally not recommended, due to the high toxicity of the drugs active against trypanosomes.
The risk of acquiring the disease can be reduced by avoiding the areas inhabited by the tsetse fly, wearing clothing that covers the body and thus reduce fly bites (sometimes this is difficult in hot climates) or using repellents insects.
How is it diagnosed?
The symptoms and a history of being in an area where there is help diagnose the disease, but this has to be confirmed by detecting the parasite in the blood, cerebrospinal fluid, lymph or other patient specimens.
Other diagnostic techniques involve the study of antibodies to the trypanosome, or patient samples inoculated mice.
How is sleeping sickness?
At first, when you are not yet affected the central nervous system, is used suramin or pentamidine, later, when it is affected, we will use melarsoprol or eflornithine. All of these drugs are toxic and must therefore be administered under strict medical supervision. Generally used intravenously.
credit to: Dr. Juan Álvarez Orejón, Dr. Charlie Easmon