AFRICA: Sleeping Sickness In Cattle Put To Sleep?
JOHANNESBURG, May 20, 2011 (IRIN) – New research on sleeping sickness in cattle in Africa is the possibility that in the not too distant future, Africa could begin to see the introduction of disease resistant livestock Sleep – a disease that kills thousands of millions of animals each year.
The research claims to have isolated two genes in the development of disease-resistant animals.
Harry Noyes, author of a paper on this published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS), May 16, told IRIN that their research was motivated by the fact that although Africa hump cattle breeds are susceptible to parasitic trypanosomes that cause sleeping sickness N’Dama is a race without a bump in the West, not severely affected by the disease.
African animal trypanosomiasis – also known as “nagana (Zulu:” depressed “) or tryp – is transmitted by the bite of infected species of tsetse flies and is endemic in Senegal to Tanzania, Chad and Zimbabwe (an area approximately the size of the United States).
[Zebu] hump cattle originated in India, where the tsetse fly has been found, but the N’Dama, which probably had been exposed to [] the parasite Trypanosoma thousands of years had developed a mechanism for monitoring the impact of disease, “said Noyes, a senior researcher at the University of Liverpool.
In the past two decades, researchers have found at least 10 genes that control the impact of the illness career of Lady N ‘.
“No, they are resistant genes, we have isolated what we feel are the two most significant for our purposes,” said Steve Kemp, a geneticist and the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), who also collaborated on the study .
Now scientists know what they’re looking for, have undertaken to isolate the bumps livestock breeds that carry the two genes.
Over the next three years, ILRI expects to increase the variety hump cattle with at least one gene. humped cattle breeds produce more milk than the N’Dama.
Decades?
“This is, of course, does not mean that poor farmers will soon have cattle that are resistant to sleeping sickness,” said Kemp. ILRI scientists alone can not test the resistance of cattle hump in three years.
After that it will take decades before the disease-resistant breeds of sleep to find the chain of small farmers, scientists believe.
“We can make sperm and semen available for dissemination,” Noyes says, adding however that it is for governments and advisory services to make it available to all farmers.
Developing sustainable competition is crucial, because most medicines claim to provide protection against the disease have proved ineffective and new drug-resistant strains of the disease evolves according to the researchers. In addition, many new drugs are too expensive for poor farmers.
Discovery was published in the week, the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed) announced a five-year plan to help farmers in Africa, access to improved drugs, diagnostics, vaccines, and perhaps even cure disease.
Initially the program will recognize the ongoing research that could help farmers.
At least three million cattle die of the disease in Africa each year, according GALVmed. About 50 million cattle and 70 million sheep and goats are at risk of Tryp each year. Although best known to cause human sleeping sickness, the trypanosome parasite most devastating blow to the welfare of man will come when farmers are ill, unproductive cattle PNAS said in a statement.
