Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Prologue
- 1 African trypanosomes and their VSGs
- 2 Malaria: the real killer
- 3 The HIV–AIDS vaccine and the disadvantage of natural selection: the yellow fever vaccine and the advantage of artificial selection
- 4 Lyme disease: a classic emerging disease
- 5 The discovery of ivermectin: a ‘crapshoot’, or not?
- 6 “You came a long way to see a tree”
- 7 Infectious disease and modern epidemiology
- 8 The ‘unholy trinity’ and the geohelminths: an intractable problem?
- 9 Hookworm disease: insidious, stealthily treacherous
- 10 The spadefoot toad and Pseudodiplorchis americanus: an amazing story of two very aquatic species in a very dry land
- 11 The schistosomes: split-bodied flukes
- 12 Dicrocoelium dendriticum and Halipegus occidualis: their life cycles and a genius at work
- 13 Trichinosis and Trichinella spp. (all eight of them, or is it nine?)
- 14 Phylogenetics: a contentious discipline
- 15 Toxoplasma gondii, Sarcocystis neurona, and Neospora caninum: the worst of the coccidians?
- Summary
- Index
- References
1 - African trypanosomes and their VSGs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Prologue
- 1 African trypanosomes and their VSGs
- 2 Malaria: the real killer
- 3 The HIV–AIDS vaccine and the disadvantage of natural selection: the yellow fever vaccine and the advantage of artificial selection
- 4 Lyme disease: a classic emerging disease
- 5 The discovery of ivermectin: a ‘crapshoot’, or not?
- 6 “You came a long way to see a tree”
- 7 Infectious disease and modern epidemiology
- 8 The ‘unholy trinity’ and the geohelminths: an intractable problem?
- 9 Hookworm disease: insidious, stealthily treacherous
- 10 The spadefoot toad and Pseudodiplorchis americanus: an amazing story of two very aquatic species in a very dry land
- 11 The schistosomes: split-bodied flukes
- 12 Dicrocoelium dendriticum and Halipegus occidualis: their life cycles and a genius at work
- 13 Trichinosis and Trichinella spp. (all eight of them, or is it nine?)
- 14 Phylogenetics: a contentious discipline
- 15 Toxoplasma gondii, Sarcocystis neurona, and Neospora caninum: the worst of the coccidians?
- Summary
- Index
- References
Summary
Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sun.
A Boy's Dream, Alexander Smith (1830–1867)Lyons (1992) describes sleeping sickness as a “classical disease of the savannah and transitional savannah around river systems where tsetse flies and people are forced into close contact by their shared need for water, especially during dry seasons. It has also been labeled a disease of frontier zones as it more generally occurs on the edges of human settlements where transition from the sylvan, or wild, ecosystem to the domesticated ecosystem of man is in progress.” One can thus easily view sleeping sickness as a ‘pastoral’ problem, which it is. It is certainly not an urban disease.
However, when most of us think of a pastoral setting, we probably conjure up a vision of rolling countrysides, green pastures, and a certain sort of tranquility, if you will. This is as true in sub-Saharan Africa as it is in Kansas, where I grew up as a boy. However, lurking in many of these peaceful African locales are tsetse flies and, as a result, anything but tranquility for humans and their domesticated ungulates. The problem is trypanosomiasis: more specifically, sleeping sickness for humans and nagana for the latter.
When we speak of trypanosomiasis, we are actually talking about a wide range of diseases in mammals caused by several species of Trypanosoma. Included among these diseases are surra, which affects horses, mules, and camels in India and North Africa.
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- Information
- Parasites and Infectious DiseaseDiscovery by Serendipity and Otherwise, pp. 108 - 127Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007