| trypanosome | <cell biology> A type of parasitic protozoan which can cause a number of serious diseases in people and domestic animals, including African sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis. The trypanosome is able to remain within a host's body for a very long time because it regularly changes the proteins (i.e. Antigens) on its outer surface, so that the host's immune system must constantly develop new antibodies in order to continue to recognise and destroy it. The trypanosome uses a large number of different genes which can be used in many combinations to come up with the different surface proteins. As a result, the host is never able to completely eliminate the trypanosome. Origin: Gr. Soma = body (09 Oct 1997) |
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| trypanosome fever | The febrile stage of sleeping sickness. (05 Mar 2000) |
| trypanosome stage | Term to replace the older term, "trypanosome stage," which was often confused with the flagellate genus Trypanosoma. It denotes the stage (infective stage for South American trypanosomiasis and African trypanosomiasis, and the only stage found in man in the latter illness) in which the flagellum arises from a posteriorly located kinetoplast and emerges from the side of the body, with an undulating membrane running along the length of the body. Origin: G. Trypanon, auger, + mastix, whip (05 Mar 2000) |