This changed after Arab slave traders entered central Africa from the east, following the Congo River, bringing parasites along. Gambian sleeping sickness travelled up the Congo River, and then further east.An Arab writer of the 14th century left the following description in the case of a sultan of the Mali Kingdom: "His end was to be overtaken by the sleeping sickness (illat an-nawm) which is a disease that frequently befalls the inhabitants of these countries especially their chieftains. Sleep overtakes one of them in such a manner that it is hardly possible to awake him. "The British naval surgeon John Atkins described the disease on his return from West Africa in 1734:
The Sleepy Distemper (common among the Negroes) gives no other previous Notice, than a want of Appetite 2 or 3 days before; their sleeps are sound, and Sense and Feeling very little; for pulling, drubbing or whipping will scarce stir up Sense and Power enough to move; and the Moment you cease beating the smart is forgot, and down they fall again into a state of Insensibility, drivling constantly from the Mouth as in deep salivation; breathe slowly, but not unequally nor snort. Young people are more subject to it than the old; and the Judgement generally pronounced is Death, the Prognostik seldom failing.
Therefore, cancer cells which divide much more rapidly than most other cells in the body will be more severely affected by decitabine just because they replicate more. In cancer cells, and more specifically in haematological malignancies, it seems that DNA hypermethylation is really critical for their development. Methylation of CpG islands upstream of tumor suppressor genes in order to silence them seems to be critical for these type of cancers. Thus at optimal doses, decitabine blocks this type of methylation and has an anti-neoplastic effect. Research
Atherosclerosis
A number of investigators have shown a relationship between atherosclerosis and disturbed blood flow. This upregulates DNA methyltransferase expression, which leads to genome-wide DNA methylation alterations and global gene expression changes. These studies have revealed several mechanosensitive genes, such as HoxA5, Klf3, and Klf4, whose promoters were hypermethylated by disturbed blood flow, but rescued by DNA methyltransferases inhibitors such as 5-aza-2-deoxycytidine. It has been found that use of this DNA methyltranferase inhibitor prevents atherosclerosis lesion formation and reduces the production of inflammatory cytokines by macrophages. References
Further reading
Moon C, Kim SH (June 2009). "Use of epigenetic modification to induce FOXP3 expression in naïve T cells". Transplant. Proc. 41 (5): 1848–1854. doi:10.1016/j.transproceed.2009.02.101. PMID 19545742. External links
"Decitabine". Drug Information Portal. U.S. National Library of Medicine.