The Protozoan Parasite Trypanosoma Brucei

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The protozoan parasite Trypanosoma Brucei is the caused of Human African Trypanosomiasis, also known as HAT or sleeping sickness. The two subspecies of protozoa that caused the sleeping sickness are T.b gambiense and T.b rhodesiene. The T.b gambiense parasites responsible for more than 95% of the cases and with over 60 million people are at risk and more than 50,000 infected (1). The parasites are transmitting by the tsetse flies. These flies founded mostly on the Africa continent South of Sahara. There are about 29-31 species of tsetse flies, but only 6 are recognized. The inflected fly carried the parasite and injected to the human host. The parasite lives within the bloodstream of human host then migrates to other areas such as the lymph nodes, spleen and spinal fluid, which results in fever, muscle aches and fatigue (2). When left untreated, it will evolves to the second stage in which the parasite invade the brain that caused mental deterioration and eventually dead (2). Currently there are no vaccines available. The trypanosomes are able to evade the host immune system due to their high degree of antigenic variation. The only available source for current treatment and control of the Infection is chemotherapy. The only drugs available for chemotherapy treatment are suramin, pentamidine, melarsopol and eflornithine. The Vinyl sulfones are also considered be a potential drug in the future because of the properties that select cysteine protease over serine. When infected animal bitten by the tsetse fly, there were different forms of parasite in the bloodstream (3). The slender form parasite replicate asexual and the non-replicating parasite is short and stumpy form (3). The slender form parasites are promptly killed by prot... ... middle of paper ... ... to the active site of the enzyme and can be displaced by the increased of substrate concentrations.(5) The noncompetitive inhibitors bind independently to the substrate and enzyme. The cysteine proteases are predominant in mammals and also important to the survival of the parasites. They rely on the clan CA family throughout their life cycle, which is very essential for future potential drugs. The clan CA cysteine proteases are promising targets for the design of antiparasitic drugs that contain lower toxicity for human. The new candidate can be very potential for future antiparasitic drug is vinyl sulfones. (5) The selective for cysteine proteases over serine and other enzymes. Peptidyl aldehydes and diazomethyl ketone are other potential agents that exhibit potent activity against the enzyme that had been proven to inhibit trypanosome proliferation in blood

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