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In a small, randomized Phase I/II clinical trial (SAT1), researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine say a 100-year-old drug called suramin, originally developed to treat African sleeping sickness, was safely administered to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who subsequently displayed measurable, but transient, improvement in core symptoms of autism. This is a colorized transmission electron micrograph of cellular mitochondria, which produce a small molecule called ATP. Inside cells, ATP serves as an energy source but released outside the cell, it acts as a danger signal. Suramin inhibits the signaling function of ATP, eliminating the cell...

Over 120 residents in Kazakhstan's Kalachi village have been diagnosed with a strange sleeping sickness where people suddenly fall into a coma-like sleep without warning. The residents then don't wake up for days and when they do, experience severe medical symptoms, the likes of which include memory loss, dizziness, blinding headaches and nausea. The sleep inducing malady has so far affected over one fourth of the village population with many residents experiencing repeated attacks. The government of Kazakhstan combined with the help of scientists have been scrambling to find the reason behind the illness. While they are pursuing some strong...

NAIROBI, May 18 (Xinhua) -- An international research team using a new combination of approaches has found two genes that may prove of vital importance to the lives and livelihoods of millions of farmers in a tsetse fly-plagued swathe of Africa. The research, aimed at finding the biological keys to protection from a single-celled trypanosome parasite that causes both African sleeping sickness in people and a wasting disease in cattle, brought together a range of high-tech tools and field observations to address a critical affliction of some of the world' s poorest people. "The two genes discovered in this research...

A simple and cheap device to diagnose sleeping sickness is a step closer according to scientists in Sweden.Human African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, is caused by parasites in the blood called trypanosomes. The disease is transmitted by tsetse flies and is fatal is left untreated. Standard diagnosis is done by looking for the parasites in blood samples using a microscope. However, the concentration of parasites is often very low, so they need to be separated from the red blood cells before analysis. Many separation methods have been developed, but they are expensive and too complex to use in remote areas where...

Last month, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $19 million to the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative to further one of its goals: finding a new drug for African sleeping sickness. Not that $19 million will come close to doing that. Even if a miracle cure is found, it will take lab work and clinical trials that could easily cost $100 million to prove it is really a miracle and not the Vioxx of the African savannah. But the gift spotlights just how tricky the search for new treatments can be when the disease is fearsome but nearly forgotten...