See Also: african sleeping sickness(medicine)
African sleeping sickness(health)
East African sleeping sickness(medicine)
chronic African sleeping sickness(medicine)
West African sleeping sickness(medicine)
acute African sleeping sickness(medicine)
sleeping sickness(medicine)
sleeping sickness(dictionary)
sleeping sickness(encyclopedia)
african horse sickness(medicine)

african sleeping sickness (medicine)


african sleeping sickness
<infectious disease> A disease affecting humans and other mammals in central Africa that is caused by the parasitic protozoans Trypanosoma brucei gambiense and Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense and is transmitted by the tsetse fly.

Symptoms include fever, chills, headache, vomiting, pain in the extremities, lymph gland enlargement, anaemia, depression, fatigue, coma, and eventually death if left untreated. The trypanosome is able to evade the host's immune system by frequently changing the proteins on its outer surface, by which the immune system identifies intruders.