Malaria is killing more people worldwide than previously thought, but the number of deaths has fallen rapidly as efforts to combat the disease have ramped up, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. More than 1.2 million people died from malaria worldwide in 2010, twice the number found in the most recent … [Read more...]
Counterfeit Anitmalarial Drugs Threaten Crisis in Africa
January 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Hopes of at last controlling malaria in Africa could be dashed by the emergence of poor-quality and fraudulent antimalarial medicines, warn experts writing in Malaria Journal. Unless urgent action is taken both within Africa and internationally, they argue, millions of lives could be put at risk. … [Read more...]
Artemisinin Hailed as One of the Greatest Advances in Fight Against Malaria
January 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
The Chinese drug artemisinin has been hailed as one of the greatest advances in fighting malaria, the scourge of the tropics, since the discovery of quinine centuries ago. Artemisinin’s discovery is being talked about as a candidate for a Nobel Prize in Medicine. Millions of American taxpayer dollars are spent on it for Africa every year. But few people realize that in one of the paradoxes of … [Read more...]
Mosquito Immune System Can Be Engineered to Block Malaria
December 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that the Anopheles mosquito’s innate immune system could be genetically engineered to block the transmission of the malaria-causing parasite to humans. In addition, they showed that the genetic modification had little impact on the mosquito’s fitness under laboratory conditions. “The immune system of the Anopheles mosquito is capable of … [Read more...]
Researchers Introduce Technology to Manufacture Artemisinin in Tobacco Plants
December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Combating malaria is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals described in the United Nations Millennium Declaration signed by all UN members at the year 2000. A key intervention to control malaria is prompt and effective treatment with artemisinin-based combination therapies. Artemisinin is a natural compound from Artemisia annua (sweet wormwood) plants, but low-cost artemisinin-based drugs … [Read more...]
Starving Malaria Parasites
December 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Researchers have developed an antimalarial agent that is effective at clearing infections caused by the malaria parasite most lethal to humans—by literally starving the parasites to death. The study by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, carried out on a small number of non-human primates, could bolster efforts to develop more potent therapies against one of … [Read more...]
Contrasting Patterns of Malaria Drug Resistance Found Between Humans and Mosquitoes
November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A recent study has detected contrasting patterns of drug resistance in malaria-causing parasites taken from both humans and mosquitoes in rural Zambia. Parasites found in human blood samples showed a high prevalence for pyrimethamine-resistance, which was consistent with the class of drugs widely used to treat malaria in the region. However, parasites taken from mosquitoes themselves had very … [Read more...]
Synthetic Artemisinin May Dramatically Lower Cost of Malaria Treatments
November 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Jay Keasling and his team have developed a synthetic form of the most commonly used malaria drug—artemisinin, which until now had to be extracted from the wormwood plant. In partnership with One World Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, scientists use synthetic biology to produce artemisinin from the bacteria E. coli in huge brewery like tanks."The goal is to increase the … [Read more...]
Glaxo’s RTS,S Malaria Vaccine Shows Promise
October 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Preliminary results from the trial of a malaria vaccine show that it protected nearly half of the children who received it from bouts of serious malaria, scientists said Tuesday. The vaccine, known as RTS,S and made by GlaxoSmithKline, has been in development for more than 25 years, initially for the American military and now with most of its support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. … [Read more...]
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