What Causes Sleeping Sickness?

Sleeping sickness is a disease found mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. It causes many symptoms, the most prominent being drowsiness by day and sleeplessness by night. It comes from very specific types of bacteria from tsetse flies and may be contagious. The symptoms act very fast, so treatment must be immediate. Death usually occurs soon after the illness reaches the brain of the patient.

Risk Factors

• A person risks the sleeping disease when he lives in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and leaves parts of his body uncovered by clothing. A person sharing body fluids with an infected person may also increase risk.

Organisms

• Sleeping disease comes from the organisms Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense and Trypanosoma brucei gambiense. These organisms are transmitted mainly from tsetse flies; however, they can also be harbored by wild and domesticated animals under unhygienic conditions.

Causes

• The sleeping disease happens when a person gets bitten by tsetse flies, which then transmits a parasite into the bloodstream. If a person is bitten by a second tsetse fly, the fly will then ingest some of the parasites from the human bloodstream, which allow the flies to reproduce.

Symptoms

• There is a painful red swelling at the site of the bite, as well as fever, headache, sweating and swollen nymph nodes--in some cases, there is also inflammation of the heart. These symptoms are displayed before or when the infection reached the central nervous system; when the infection reaches the patient's brain, she may experience fear and mood swings.

Namesake

• The sleeping disease is called such because the patient experiences drowsiness by day and sleeplessness by night, eventually lapsing into a coma. The patient may face death within six months.