Ugandan children who received the combination therapy of artemether-lumefantrine experienced a lower rate of treatment failure compared to other combination therapies, according to a study in the May 23/30 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on malaria.
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Passive immunization through the development of fully human antibodies specific to Plasmodium falciparum may be effective at controlling the disease, report researchers led by Dr. Richard S. McIntosh from the University of Nottingham in a paper published this week in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens. The researchers developed these novel reagents by antibody repertoire cloning generated from immune Gambian adults.
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A team of Australian malaria experts has been meeting in Canberra to find the most efficient ways to combat the disease in the South Pacific. Canberra has just announced a new multi-million dollar aid package to help efforts in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.
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This past week, global health activists marked Africa Malaria Day (April 25) with a campaign to educate the public about the disease and a pledge to work for increased cooperation and funding. It was also an occasion to highlight progress made against malaria, which kills up to a million children under five each year in sub-Saharan Africa. From Washington, VOA's William Eagle reports.
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In this week's PLoS Medicine, a team of international health experts issue a bold call to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria: fund the salaries of health workers or else risk a situation in which medicines for these three diseases are made available in poor countries but there are no health professionals to deliver them.
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Johns Hopkins University researchers have cured malaria-infected mice with single shots of a new series of potent, long lasting synthetic drugs modeled on an ancient Chinese herbal folk remedy.
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A clinical trial conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public concluded that daily zinc supplements reduced the risk of death among children aged 12 to 48 months by 18 percent. However, the researchers did not find any significant reduction in mortality among children 1 to 11 months of age. The study is published in the March 17, 2007, edition of The Lancet.
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Malaria afflicts as many as 500 million people each year around the world. More than 1 million die, most of them children under the age of five living in sub-Saharan Africa. Last June, President Bush launched an initiative committing $1.2 billion over the next five years to combating the disease in 15 of Africa's hardest-hit countries.
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The second phase of the Wisdom experiment, carried out as an international cooperation project involving IN2P3 /CNRS, was completed on January 31. Thanks to the association of several international calculation grids , including the European grid Egee , it was possible to analyze close to 80,000 potential medicines for the treatment of malaria per hour over the course of 10 weeks.
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Parasite-carrying bloodsucking leeches may be delivering a one-two punch to newts, according to biologists, who say the discovery may provide clues to disease outbreaks in amphibians.
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Malaria kills more than one million people each year, most of them young children living in Africa. Now physicists in the UK have shared their computers with biologists from countries including France and Korea in an effort to combat the disease.
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The number of individuals with Parkinson's disease in 15 of the world's largest nations will double over the next generation, according to a study published in the January 30 issue of the journal Neurology. The study highlights the significant challenge facing countries with rapidly growing economies, particularly in Asia, many of which are ill prepared to meet this impending public health threat.
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