Study identifies protection against African sleeping sickness

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have identified two genes that may prove key to protecting against African sleeping sickness in people and a wasting disease in cattle. Cases of sleeping sickness infections in people have fallen in the last 13 years, from an estimated 300,000 incidences a year in 1998, to 30,000 in 2009. It kills more than half of those infected, but also affects cattle in the animal form of the disease - African animal trypanosomiasis - resulting in an annual economic loss of $4 billion. Scientists, working with partners in the UK and Africa, investigated the differences in the disease between the humped cattle breed and the humpless West African breed, called N'Dama. The N'Dama are the oldest of African cattle breeds and are not seriously affected by the condition, as it has evolved resistance to the parasite over a long period time. The N?Dama, however, is smaller and produces less milk than the humped cattle, and scientists have, therefore, been working to understand if disease resistance in one breed could be transferred to another. Combining a range of genetic approaches, that had previously only been used separately, scientists identified the broad regions of the genomes in both breeds of cattle that control the different responses to infection with trypanosome parasites.