Trypanosome- any member of a group of protozoa that are blood parasites. They cause diseases, such as African sleeping sickness and Chagas' disease, in human beings and other animals. The sleeping sickness is transmitted from person to person by the tsetse fly, a blood-sucking fly found only in Africa. They start as a parasite in the blood, but in later stages of infection they can invade the central nervous system, causing an inflamation of the brain and spinal cord that is responcible for the characteristic neurological symptom of sleeping.
