Baral Toya Nath
Institute for Biological Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, 100 Sussex Dr. Ottawa, ON, Canada K1A 0R6.
J Biomed Biotechnol. 2010;2010:389153. doi: 10.1155/2010/389153. Epub 2010 Feb 23.
Trypanosomiasis is one of the major parasitic diseases for which control is still far from reality. The vaccination approaches by using dominant surface proteins have not been successful, mainly due to antigenic variation of the parasite surface coat. On the other hand, the chemotherapeutic drugs in current use for the treatment of this disease are toxic and problems of resistance are increasing (see Kennedy (2004) and Legros et al. (2002)). Therefore, alternative approaches in both treatment and vaccination against trypanosomiasis are needed at this time. To be able to design and develop such alternatives, the biology of this parasite and the host response against the pathogen need to be studied. These two aspects of this disease with few examples of alternative approaches are discussed here.
锥虫病是主要的寄生虫病之一，目前距离有效控制仍很遥远。利用主要表面蛋白的疫苗接种方法尚未成功，主要原因是寄生虫表面被膜的抗原变异。另一方面，目前用于治疗该疾病的化疗药物有毒，且耐药问题日益严重（见肯尼迪（2004年）和勒格罗斯等人（2002年））。因此，目前需要针对锥虫病的治疗和疫苗接种的替代方法。为了能够设计和开发此类替代方法，需要研究这种寄生虫的生物学特性以及宿主对病原体的反应。本文将讨论该疾病在这两个方面以及很少有替代方法的实例。
