City scientists offer hope of new sleeping sickness treatments

NEW treatments to help tackle sleeping sickness could be on the horizon, thanks to research by Edinburgh University scientists.

Scientists have found that the parasite that causes sleeping sickness, which can transform itself into either of two physical forms, has developed a careful balance between these.

One of these types ensures infection in the bloodstream of a victim, and the other type is taken up by the tsetse fly and spread to another person or animal.

Sleeping sickness, which is spread by the bite of the tsetse fly, affects 30,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa.

Professor Keith Matthews, from Edinburgh University, who led the study, said: "Sleeping sickness parasites alter their form in order to ensure their survival and to spread.

"We hope that, having discovered more about how these parasites behave, we will be able to develop ways of interfering with their survival strategy and interrupt the spread of this disease."