Recent pre-G8 Summit coverage reveals the devastating effects of sleeping sickness, a terrible disease infecting about half a million people in Africa today.

A new drug test developed by researchers at the University of Glasgow and St George's University of London, could potentially save the life of thousands of sufferers of this deadly disease in the future.

Sleeping sickness is carried around in Tsetse flies. The infection is caused by a parasite that multiplies in the blood, and then enters patients' brains. The parasites can change patients' behaviour, their sleep patterns and even their ability to do simple things like feeding themselves. The main drug used to treat patients is decades old and contains arsenic. The drug itself 'melarsoprol' is so dangerous that it can kill up one in twenty patients who are treated.

Unfortunately, more and more patients are not responding to melarsoprol, and the only other choice we have is expensive and difficult to use. In effect this means that some patients may receive the drug, run the risks of side effects or death, and still not be cured.

The new tests carried out by the University of Glasgow and St George's University of London can assess if parasites are likely to respond to melarsoprol, or not. The test detects a fluorescent compound that enters cells in the same way as melarsoprol. Resistant parasites don't take up the drug, and neither do they take up the fluorescent test compound.

Dr Michael Barrett of the University of Glasgow's Infection and Immunity Department comments:

'In principal, we should now be able to isolate parasites from a patients' blood, and expose them to the fluorescent probe and then use special microscopes to see if parasites can take up the arsenical drug or not. We are working hard to see if it will be possible to try this new and exciting test out in sleeping sickness hospitals in countries like Angola, although it will be some time before the full value of this test can be assessed.'

Sleeping sickness is one of the most neglected human diseases, and mainly affects the most deprived peoples of some African countries.

The research findings are to be published in the Lancet journal in a paper entitled "Detection of arsenical drug resistance in Trypanosoma brucei with a simple fluorescence test" on July 6 2005. See: The Lancet journal for fuller details.

The collaborative project has been funded by £185,000 of funding by the Wellcome Trust. See: Wellcome Trust website for further details

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First published: 6 July 2005