Symptoms include swollen lymph nodes, swelling of the hands and face, skin rash, fever, severe headaches, muscle and joint pain, and fatigue. Weight loss is also common as the disease progresses. During the second stage of this disease neurological impairment occurs where the person may experience personality changes, slurred speech, sleep pattern changes, progressive confusion, difficulty in walking and seizures (Thomas ED). Sleeping for long periods of the day and insomnia at night is also a common symptom (West ED). .
Each disease can lead to death if not treated soon after contact, depending on which type disease one has. As of yet there are no vaccines to prevent either disease. There are, however, drugs available for treatment. Most drugs that are used for treatment are often scarce and dangerous to administer leaving horrible side effects. Originally Atoxyl was used to combat sleeping sickness in 1932, but it contained arsenic that left most patients blind after use. Melarsoprol was used to prevent side effects but small amounts remain to put it as an effective drug to use (Thomas ED). "The infection can usually be cured by an appropriate course of anti-trypanosomal therapy. Pentamidine isethionate (approved by the FDA, but considered investigational for the purpose) and Suramin (under an investigational New Drug Protocol from the CDC Drug Service) are the drugs of choice to treat the hemolymphatic stage of West and East African Trypanosomiasis respectively" (Moore ED). Suramin, Pentamidine, and Berenil have been used to treat, and sometimes cure sleeping sickness prior to the onset of neurological symptoms (Thomas ED). The first stages of African sleeping sickness are relatively easy to treat. The second stage is what is most difficult to treat because the disease begins developing antibodies against the original drugs used. Fifteen to thirty percent of second stage treatments fail.
