Malaria.com is delighted to present this latest e-issue in partnership with WWARN (the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network). WWARN focuses on gathering data and collating resources related to malaria medication, and specifically factors affecting its efficacy. READ MORE>>
Blog Posts
Is LAMP Diagnostics the Key to Malaria Elimination?
Malaria elimination is possible within a generation. But controlling malaria and eliminating malaria are different, and each pose certain challenges. Overcoming the unique challenges of malaria elimination is essential to meeting this goal, and the barriers presented in malaria elimination settings will require different strategies and policies.
How Epstein-Barr Virus and Malaria Co-infection May Create a Lethal Combination
A recent study in PLOS Pathogens investigates how Epstein-Barr virus and malaria co-infection may create a lethal combination if the timing is right.
NEWS
Malaria Intervention in Schools Leads to Improvements in Student Performance
New research suggests that the ability of children in Africa to perform well in school could be dramatically improved through basic malaria education and treatment. While less fatal among older children, malaria infections often reduce a child’s ability to concentrate.
Eradicate Malaria, Says Obama During State of Union Speech
Two days before delivering his last State of the Union address, President Obama called one of his top advisers into the Oval Office and said he had decided to add a major pledge to the speech that his team had neither discussed nor vetted: to rid the world of malaria… The result was two sentences in his State of the Union address about how, in part through American commitment, the world could soon “end the scourge of H.I.V./AIDS.”
WHO to Test Malaria Vaccine in Africa
The World Health Organization reported the agency would begin testing a promising malaria vaccine in October to see if it should be used in African countries affected by the parasitic disease.
Mosquitoes Smell, Then See Their Target
New research shows how mosquitoes have become so good at finding hosts, like us, for their bloody meals.
Research
Tools and Strategies for Malaria Control and Elimination: What Do We Need to Achieve a Grand Convergence in Malaria?
Progress made in malaria control during the past decade has prompted increasing global dialogue on malaria elimination and eradication. The product development pipeline for malaria has never been stronger, with promising new tools to detect, treat, and prevent malaria, including innovative diagnostics, medicines, vaccines, vector control products, and improved mechanisms for surveillance and response.
Does High-Dose Antimicrobial Chemotherapy Prevent the Evolution of Resistance?
High-dose chemotherapy has long been advocated as a means of controlling drug resistance in infectious diseases but recent empirical studies have begun to challenge this view. Researchers have developed a general framework for modeling and understanding resistance emergence based on principles from evolutionary biology.
Targeting the Cell Stress Response of Plasmodium Falciparum to Overcome Artemisinin Resistance
Successful control of falciparum malaria depends greatly on treatment with artemisinin combination therapies. Thus, reports that resistance to artemisinins (ARTs) has emerged, and that the prevalence of this resistance is increasing, are alarming. The researchers’ model predicts that extending current three-day ART treatment courses to four days, or splitting the doses, will efficiently clear resistant parasite infections.
Challenges in Modelling Infectious DIsease Dynamics
Malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis (TB) collectively account for several million deaths each year, with all three ranking among the top ten killers in low-income countries. Despite being caused by very different organisms, malaria, HIV, and TB present a suite of challenges for mathematical modellers that are particularly pronounced in these infections, but represent general problems in infectious disease modelling, and highlight many of the challenges described throughout this issue. Here, we describe some of the unifying challenges that arise in modelling malaria, HIV, and TB, including variation in dynamics within the host, diversity in the pathogen, and heterogeneity in human contact networks and behaviour. Through the lens of these three pathogens, we provide specific examples of the other challenges in this issue and discuss their implications for informing public health efforts.
Landscape Ecology and Epidemiology of Malaria Associated with Rubber Plantations in Thailand: Integrated Approaches to Malaria Ecotoping
The agricultural land use changes that are human-induced changes in agroforestry ecosystems and in physical environmental conditions contribute substantially to the potential risks for malaria transmission in receptive areas. Due to the pattern and extent of land use change, the risks or negatively ecosystemic outcomes are the results of the dynamics of malaria transmission, the susceptibility of human populations, and the geographical distribution of malaria vectors. This review focused basically on what are the potential effects of agricultural land use change as a result of the expansion of rubber plantations in Thailand and how significant the ecotopes of malaria-associated rubber plantations (MRP) are.