|
pubmed:abstractText |
Sleeping sickness due to Trypanosoma brucei (T.b.) gambiense is still a major public health problem in some central African countries. Historically, relapse rates around 5% have been observed for treatment with melarsoprol, widely used to treat second stage patients. Later, relapse rates of up to 50% have been recorded in some isolated foci in Angola, Sudan, Uganda and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Previous investigations are not conclusive on whether decreased sensitivity to melarsoprol is responsible for these high relapse rates. Therefore we aimed to establish a parasite collection isolated from cured as well as from relapsed patients for downstream comparative drug sensitivity profiling. A major constraint for this type of investigation is that T.b. gambiense is particularly difficult to isolate and adapt to classical laboratory rodents.
|
