[Treatment of human African trypanosomiasis].

The melarsoprol is still the only active drug during the nervous stage of African human trypanosomiasis, its prescription still relies on empiric rules and because of its toxicity, it appears necessary to study in gaseous phase chromatography and mass spectrometry, its pharmacokinetic in the serum and the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of the patients at the evolutive stage of the illness. Because of the early penetration of the Trypanosoma into the central nervous system, new therapeutic investigations should only search molecules capable to pass through the blood brain barrier: this in unfortunately not always the case, the rifamycins diffusing easily into CSF, they seem to offer a reliable way of research. For these therapeutic investigations, sheep is an easy to handle experimental model and of a reasonable cost.