tropical diseases

Watching water from space could aid disease prevention in China

harminka — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:54:21 -0600

Scientists are looking to outer space for help in their attempt to prevent new outbreaks of the tropical disease schistosomiasis in southern China.

New UNC laboratory to help track and control tropical diseases

harminka — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:02:00 -0500

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health has established a new Gillings Innovation Lab to track and map tropical infectious diseases such as malaria, using state-of-the-art molecular and demographic methods.

Insect warning colors aid cancer and tropical disease drug discovery

harminka — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:59:42 -0500

Brightly colored beetles or butterfly larvae nibbling on a plant may signal the presence of chemical compounds active against cancer cell lines and tropical parasitic diseases, according to researchers at Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

First method for testing, assessing drug treatments for Chagas' disease

harminka — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:04:56 -0500

Chagas’ disease is a tropical parasitic sickness that currently affects more than 16 million people, with a staggering 100 million at risk, largely in the tropical areas of South and Central America. And yet the main drug used to treat the disease is highly toxic and causes serious side effects.

Global Fund to Fight Neglected Tropical Diseases

harminka — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:40:17 -0500

An international team of tropical disease control experts has urged the global health and development community, and particularly the G8 leaders, to establish a new financing mechanism to combat the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) of poverty.

Solving the drug price crisis

harminka — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:24:59 -0500

The mounting U.S. drug price crisis can be contained and eventually reversed by separating drug discovery from drug marketing and by establishing a non-profit company to oversee funding for new medicines, according to two MIT experts on the pharmaceutical industry.

Neglected tropical diseases burden those overseas, but travelers also at risk

harminka — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:13:34 -0600

Though little known to most Americans, lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, leishmaniasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis and other so-called neglected tropical diseases are responsible for severe health burdens, especially among the world’s poorest people.

Poor Americans suffer hidden burden of parasitic, other neglected diseases

harminka — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:00:13 -0600

Large numbers of the poorest Americans living in the United States are suffering from some of the same parasitic infections that affect the poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, says the Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

New screening strategy for detection of chagas disease in children

harminka — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 04:55:01 -0600

A new targeted screening strategy could make the diagnosis and treatment of Chagas disease more feasible in low-resource settings, concludes a new study, publishing on December 26, 2007, in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Parasitic tropical diseases in Americas can be eliminated

harminka — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:25:51 -0600

Although it has been speculated for more than a century that the slave trade was responsible for bringing many tropical diseases to the Americas, only recently has convincing evidence shown that lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis), schistosomiasis, and onchocerciasis (river blindness) originated in this way.

New system to lead to safer drugs for tropical disease leishmaniasis

harminka — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:20:53 -0500

The fight against the deadly tropical disease Leishmaniasis, also known as black fever, has been boosted by scientists at the University of Durham, whose new screening system has raised the possibility of new, safer drugs. The work is highlighted in the quarterly magazine of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) this week.

Finding better ways to treat schistosomiasis

harminka — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:08:26 -0500

Researchers provide new details about the inner workings of a parasitic worm that causes a tropical disease called schistosomiasis, which leads to itchy skin, fever, chills, muscle aches, and liver disease that, in some cases, can be fatal.