African Sleeping Sickness

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Bio 102 African Sleeping Sickness African sleeping sickness, also known as African Trypanosomiasis, is caused by the tsetse fly and primarily affects the Sub-Saharan region of Africa. The tsetse fly which is large and brown in color takes blood from the host, similar to a mosquito. There are currently two forms of the disease that varies by region and the different variates of trypanosome brucei. The first type, Trypanosoma brucei gambinese, is found mostly in western Africa and is also referred to as Gambian sleeping sickness. The second type of sleeping sickness is called Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense generally affects east Africa. . Both diseases are a parasitic disease caused by a blood meal from the tsetse fly in which the mammal acts as the host. Currently, about thirty thousand humans are infected with the disease and counting, this is not including mammals such as cows that are also very susceptible to the disease. The largest infected population of African sleeping sickness is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, taking over eighty percent of the cases. Due to the lack of migration of the society that was affected, the disease remained isolated until the Arab slave trade. Once the traders began traveling through Congo, so did the disease. In 1903, African sleeping sickness was identified by David Bruce, a Scottish microbiologist and pathologist. The cycle of infection first begins within the tsetse fly when they have their first meal which is the blood of a mammal. The trypomastigotes in the fly’s midgut transforms into procyclic tryposmastigotes, which undergoes another transformation in the salivary gland into metacyclic trypomastigotes. This final product (metacyclic trypomastigotes) is the disease that is carried in the tsetse fly’s saliva, which is then administered into the mammal in the next blood meal. Once the human is in contact and

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