A team of scientists from UCLA, led by Aydogan Ozcan, describe their new online tool, called BioGames, which they hope will improve malaria diagnosis worldwide: On April 25th, 2014, World Malaria Day, we released an online training game and educational module for malaria diagnosis, where we give each online user hundreds of images per game to assess their ability to identify malaria infected … [Read more...]
Play an Online Game to Help Diagnose Malaria
Online crowd-sourcing — in which a task is presented to the public, who respond, for free, with various solutions and suggestions — has been used to evaluate potential consumer products, develop software algorithms and solve vexing research-and-development challenges. But diagnosing infectious diseases? … [Read more...]
Malaria Game
Play now! Test your malaria diagnostic skills (no experience necessary) and help in creating a useful database for scientists and doctors at the same time. This game, designed by researchers at UCLA, was launched on April 25, 2014 (World Malaria Day) as a novel and highly innovative approach to address the challenges of diagnosing malaria. Your efforts will help to create a bank of gold-standard … [Read more...]
UCSF Joins Research Partnership to Eliminate Malaria in Namibia
The Global Health Group at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) is celebrating the success of Namibia, where malaria case have dropped 98 percent over the past decade. In 2003, Namibia saw 450,000 cases of malaria; in 2013, that number fell to 2,500. The country is now on track to becoming malaria-free by 2020. The deadly disease, caused by parasites that are transmitted from person … [Read more...]
World Malaria Day 2014
World Malaria Day (WMD) is commemorated every year on 25 April and recognizes global efforts to control malaria. Globally, 3.3 billion people in 106 countries are at risk of malaria. In 2012, malaria caused an estimated 627,000 deaths, mostly among African children. Asia, Latin America, and to a lesser extent the Middle East and parts of Europe are also affected. World Malaria Day sprung out of … [Read more...]
British Container Breeding Mosquitoes: The Impact of Urbanisation and Climate Change on Community Composition and Phenology
The proliferation of artificial container habitats in urban areas has benefitted urban adaptable mosquito species globally. In areas where mosquitoes transmit viruses and parasites, it can promote vector population productivity and fuel mosquito-borne disease outbreaks. … [Read more...]
Wolbachia Infection Modifies the Profile, Shuttling and Structure of MicroRNAs in a Mosquito Cell Line
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that play important roles in many biological processes such as development, cell signaling and immune response. Small RNA deep sequencing technology provided an opportunity for a thorough survey of the miRNA profile of a mosquito cell line from Aedes aegypti. We characterized the miRNA composition of the nucleus and the cytoplasm of uninfected cells and … [Read more...]
IgG1 and IgG4 Antibody Responses to the Anopheles gambiae Salivary Protein gSG6
Human antibody response to the Anopheles gambiae salivary protein gSG6 has recently emerged as a potentially useful tool for malaria epidemiological studies and for the evaluation of vector control interventions. However, the current understanding of the host immune response to mosquito salivary proteins and of the possible crosstalk with early response to Plasmodium parasites is still very … [Read more...]
Targeting NAD+ Metabolism in the Human Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is an essential metabolite utilized as a redox cofactor and enzyme substrate in numerous cellular processes. Elevated NAD+ levels have been observed in red blood cells infected with the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, but little is known regarding how the parasite generates NAD+. Here, we employed a mass spectrometry-based metabolomic approach to … [Read more...]
Diagnostic Testing of Pediatric Fevers: Meta-Analysis of 13 National Surveys Assessing Influences of Malaria Endemicity and Source of Care on Test Uptake for Febrile Children under Five Years
In 2010, the World Health Organization revised guidelines to recommend diagnosis of all suspected malaria cases prior to treatment. There has been no systematic assessment of malaria test uptake for pediatric fevers at the population level as countries start implementing guidelines. We examined test use for pediatric fevers in relation to malaria endemicity and treatment-seeking behavior in … [Read more...]