Zoonotic disease

Trypanosomiasis. There are2 varieties: Human African trypanosomiasis {HAT}, also known as sleeping sickness or Chagas disease, or American trypanosomiasis.
There are two forms of the HAT, the East African variant caused by Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense and the West African form caused by trypanosoma brucei gambiense. If untreated, the disease is always fatal. Transmission of the disease in both humans and cattle is by the bite of the blood-sucking tsetse fly. Patients in the early, or hemolymphatic, stage may report nonspecific symptoms such as malaise, headache, weight loss, arthralgia, and fatigue, and also have episodes of fever accompanied by rigors and vomiting, which may be misdiagnosed as malaria. The neurological features of late or encephalitic stage HAT include anxiety, lassitude and indifference, agitation, irritability, mania, sexual hyperactivity, suicidal tendencies, and hallucinations. Current drug therapy for both early- and late-stage HAT is unsatisfactory with a heavy reliance on four main highly toxic drugs. These include suramin, pentamidine, Melarsoprol and eflornithine.
Chagas disease is most commonly transmitted to humans via T cruzi – infected reduviid bug defecations near bite wounds or exposed mucosal surfaces. Characterized by an in?uenza-like illness acutely in adults, Chagas disease may result in chronic heart disease or gastrointestinal megasyndromes following a prolonged, indeterminate stage of subclinical infection. Pharmacotherapy with either Benznidazole or Nifurtimox is now recommended in all acute cases and reactivated cases of symptomatic Chagas disease