ArticlePloS one2014
Cyclical appearance of African trypanosomes in the cerebrospinal fluid: new insights in how trypanosomes enter the CNS.
Article in PloS one, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 60 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sleep-Wake Dysregulation in Human African Trypanosomiasis: From Neuroinvasion to Neuronal Dysfunction.Clocks & sleep · 2026Review
- Post-hemorrhagic hydrocephalus of prematurity is associated with disruption of tight junctions and increased macrophage activity in the choroid plexus.Fluids and barriers of the CNS · 2026Article
- Modelling motility of Trypanosoma brucei.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Roles of cytokines in modulatingFrontiers in parasitology · 2025Article
- Advances in the Immunology of the Host-Parasite Interactions in African Trypanosomosis, including Single-Cell Transcriptomics.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- How colonization bottlenecks, tissue niches, and transmission strategies shape protozoan infections.Trends in parasitology · 2023Review
- Targeting Metalloenzymes: The "Achilles' Heel" of Viruses and Parasites.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Live imaging of microglia during sleeping sickness reveals early and heterogeneous inflammatory responses.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- Cerebral malaria - modelling interactions at the blood-brain barrier in vitro.Disease models & mechanisms · 2022Review
- Transmigration ofiScience · 2022Article
- Immune response and pathogen invasion at the choroid plexus in the onset of cerebral toxoplasmosis.Journal of neuroinflammation · 2022Article
- The pathogenicity of blood stream and central nervous system forms ofF1000Research · 2022Article
- Fatty acid uptake inFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2022Review
- Thinking outside the blood: Perspectives on tissue-resident Trypanosoma brucei.PLoS pathogens · 2021Review
- Neuropathogenesis caused byMicrobial cell (Graz, Austria) · 2021Article
- Defeating the trypanosomatid trio: proteomics of the protozoan parasites causing neglected tropical diseases.RSC medicinal chemistry · 2020Review
- Generation of neuroinflammation in human African trypanosomiasis.Neurology(R) neuroimmunology & neuroinflammation · 2019Review
- Variable Surface Glycoprotein fromPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Review
- Neopterin and CXCL-13 in Diagnosis and Follow-Up ofBioMed research international · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is textbook knowledge that human infective forms of Trypanosoma brucei, the causative agent of sleeping sickness, enter the brain across the blood-brain barrier after an initial phase of weeks (rhodesiense) or months (gambiense) in blood. Based on our results using an animal model, both statements seem questionable. As we and others have shown, the first infection relevant crossing of the blood brain border occurs via the choroid plexus, i.e. via the blood-CSF barrier. In addition, counting trypanosomes in blood-free CSF obtained by an atlanto-occipital access revealed a cyclical infection in CSF that was directly correlated to the trypanosome density in blood infection. We also obtained conclusive evidence of organ infiltration, since parasites were detected in tissues outside the blood vessels in heart, spleen, liver, eye, testis, epididymis, and especially between the cell layers of the pia mater including the Virchow-Robin space. Interestingly, in all organs except pia mater, heart and testis, trypanosomes showed either a more or less degraded appearance of cell integrity by loss of the surface coat (VSG), loss of the microtubular cytoskeleton and loss of the intracellular content, or where taken up by phagocytes and degraded intracellularly within lysosomes. This is also true for trypanosomes placed intrathecally into the brain parenchyma using a stereotactic device. We propose a different model of brain infection that is in accordance with our observations and with well-established facts about the development of sleeping sickness.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.