Adenosine cycle in African trypanosomes.

African trypanosomes can convert adenosine to adenosine monophosphate. However, in Trypanosoma brucei, as in T. vivax and T. congolense, most of the adenosine is broken down to adenine before conversion to the nucleotide by adenine phosphoribosyltransferase. Trypanosoma brucei and T. vivax use the purine nucleoside hydrolase for adenosine cleavage while T. congolense uses purine nucleoside phosphorylase for the nucleoside cleavage. Trypanosoma vivax also deaminates adenine to hypoxanthine before its conversion to adenosine monophosphate by way of inosine monophosphate. All African trypanosomes lack adenosine deaminase. This finding particularly demonstrates that the effectiveness of the therapy of African trypanosomiasis with adenosine analogue drugs will depend upon the strain of trypanosome which causes the infection.