Researchers battle African 'sleeping sickness'

by Andy Henion

October 17, 2007 - A team of MSU researchers will attempt to identify future hotspots of “sleeping sickness” in Kenya by developing a new model that ultimately could be used to predict the path of other diseases.

The four-year project, funded by a $1.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will analyze factors such as climate change, land use and distribution of the tsetse fly in the east African country.

The bite of the tsetse spreads the potentially fatal “sleeping sickness,” or trypanosomiasis, to humans and livestock, although it is currently impossible to predict where the disease will surface next, said Joseph Messina, MSU associate professor of geography and lead researcher.

“In the long run, the goal of the model is to actually predict the areas where people or animals will be at risk for the disease,” Messina said. “So one, 10 or 50 years from now, if you’re a government planner and you’re building a disease-control program, you’ll have that information.”

Because the research draws MSU faculty from multiple departments and areas of expertise – including climatology, entomology and epidemiology – it falls in line with the NIH “Roadmap for Medical Research,” Messina said. The federal initiative promotes interdisciplinary health research.

The seeds of the project were sown at a February 2006 meeting in Nairobi, where Messina and other MSU researchers gathered to brainstorm research ideas relating to Africa. The meeting was supported with a grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, which also supports interdisciplinary research.

"The NIH funding awarded to Dr. Messina and his team indicates that the seed funding we have provided to researchers through the Health and Biomedical Research Initiative is beginning to pay dividends,” said Ian Gray, vice president for research and graduate studies. “Our faculty are very competitive and with the proper research infrastructure they will garner their share of competitive federal grants."

With the Kenya project, which starts this month, MSU researchers and graduate students will spend months at a time in Africa over the next four years. Their completed model will resemble a series of maps, Messina explained, with data collected from satellite technology, field research and a first-of-its-kind climate model of Kenya already created by MSU researchers.

The research also involves catching tsetse flies and testing them for parasites, which can be a risky proposition, Messina acknowledged. “There’s no prevention; you just hope you don’t get bitten,” he said. Without treatment, the disease can invade the central nervous system and cause extreme lethargy, coma and, finally, death.

Messina said he hopes to expand the research to other parts of eastern Africa, including Uganda and Tanzania.

He added that the completed model ultimately could help scientists attack diseases in the United States, such as hantavirus – a rodent-borne, pulmonary disease – and Chagas disease, a life-threatening illness transmitted by blood-sucking bugs found in some Southern states.

“If we gain a better, clearer understanding of sleeping sickness, that will be great,” Messina said. “But if through this process of exploring how climate, humans, animals and the environment interact on a generalized level, we can take this one disease model and apply it to other diseases in other places, that’s a larger goal.”