Actor George Clooney contracts malaria following Sudan trip

Margot · Jan 21, 2011

Kimaris said: ↑

Yea, who gives a (*)(*)(*)(*) about all those poor little kids and woman being butchered.
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Sudan and Somalia are two different countries.

Kimaris · Jan 21, 2011

Margot said: ↑

Sudan and Somalia are two different countries.
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Genocide is Genocide no matter where it takes place.

Margot · Jan 21, 2011

Kimaris said: ↑

Genocide is Genocide no matter where it takes place.
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Somalia has a problem with 600 Al Shabaab gangsters.

Darfur, Sudan has a problem with water so the herdsmen and the farmers fight over it.

That's why Libya, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are drilling water wells as fast as they can.

No doubt, Clooney knows that now and isn't duped by the soundbites.

flounder · Jan 21, 2011

Rapunzel said: ↑

The banning of DDT has killed more people around the world than the threat it posed. They need to start using DDT again. It should be unbanned!!!!
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When we were kids we use to ride our bikes in back of the DDt truck, it was fun riding in the smog. We always got excited when they came, nothing wrong with it,,,It never bothered me.....

...^^,Look, there I am....

We even had songs in school...

Now somebody said Mrs. Abernathy grew another finger after this, her husband said no,,,she always had eleven fingers...

Rapunzel · Jan 21, 2011

Think for myself said: ↑

By all means, please link us to the source of that information.
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Sure no problem...just another EPA piece of (*)(*)(*)(*) regulation.

http://www.eco-imperialism.com/content/article.php3?id=68
http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.442/healthissue_detail.asp
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/DDT.html
http://rightwingnews.com/2010/09/3-billion-counting-the-cost-of-banning-ddt/
http://www.malaria.org/news122.html

How many more would you like???...there are plenty more.

Think for myself · Jan 21, 2011

Rapunzel said: ↑

Sure no problem...just another EPA piece of (*)(*)(*)(*) regulation.

http://www.eco-imperialism.com/content/article.php3?id=68
http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.442/healthissue_detail.asp
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/DDT.html
http://rightwingnews.com/2010/09/3-billion-counting-the-cost-of-banning-ddt/

How many more would you like???...there are plenty more.
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Your original claim.

Rapunzel said: ↑

The banning of DDT has killed more people around the world than the threat it posed.
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A quick glance at your links does not support your ridiculous assertion, especially given we do not know the extent of the threat it posed as we stopped using it.

Your statement was one that was impossible to quantify. I am not sure why you attempted to defend something so clearly made up.

Margot · Jan 21, 2011

Think for myself said: ↑

Your original claim.

A quick glance at your links does not support your ridiculous assertion, especially given we do not know the extent of the threat it posed as we stopped using it.

Your statement was one that was impossible to quantify. I am not sure why you attempted to defend something so clearly made up.
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The ban on DDT came after that book, "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson..

It was sloppy overreaction.. but in its day DDT sure did a lot of good.

The evidence is well documented with spectacular results in Al Hasa province for one.

Think for myself · Jan 21, 2011

Margot said: ↑

The ban on DDT came after that book, "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson..

It was sloppy overreaction.. but in its day DDT sure did a lot of good.

The evidence is well documented with spectacular results in Al Hasa province for one.
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If you say so.

samiam5211 · Jan 21, 2011

dixiehunter said: ↑

He is nothing more than a attention starving jerk.

He deserves what he got.
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I know. Everyone knows Africa is the best place to get attention. There are paparazzi everywhere. Access Hollywood spends at least 2/3 of every episode talking about the latest juicy gossip from Sub Saharan Africa.

Have you even bothered to actually take a look at what Clooney is helping do?

waltky · Jan 21, 2011

Granny says she'd be willin' to nurse him back to health...

George Clooney Got Malaria: 5 Facts About the Still-Dangerous Disease
Jan 21, 2011 - George Clooney's dazzling good looks couldn't protect him from one of Africa's biggest dangers: malaria.

He picked up the infection while he was in Sudan earlier this month. According to a statement, he has now recovered. Piers Morgan, Larry King's replacement on CNN, broke the news on Twitter. In the statement, his representative said, "This was [Clooney's] second bout with it. This illustrates how with proper medication, the most lethal condition in Africa can be reduced to a bad 10 days instead of a death sentence."

Clooney's malaria may help bring more attention to the disease, which continues to be a major public health problem in many parts of the world. Surge Desk gives a quick primer on malaria today.

1. It is common
The World Health Organization estimates there are 250 million cases of malaria worldwide each year.

2. It is deadly
Every year, about 1 million people die from malaria.

3. It is most common in Africa
Almost 90 percent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, where it is the second leading cause of infectious-disease-related death. HIV/AIDS is No. 1. Twenty percent of childhood deaths in Africa are caused by malaria or its complications. That's because of both limited treatment and because of how common it is: On average, an African child will experience malaria fever 1.6 to 5.4 times every year, according to WHO.

4. It is treatable
Despite the huge number of malaria deaths each year, the infection can be treated with artemisinin-based combination therapy. It can be very effective, but there is a growing problem with drug-resistant malaria. That's cause for concern among global health advocates.

5. It costs poor countries a great deal of money
According to the WHO, in some of the countries most plagued by malaria, the disease takes "up to 40 percent of public health expenditures; 30 percent to 50 percent of inpatient hospital admissions; [and] up to 60 percent of outpatient health clinic visits."

Source
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waltky · Apr 9, 2011

Granny says she better not find out he been kissin' onna monkey or he gonna lose his biggest fan...

Monkeys 'harbour malaria threat'
8 April 2011 - A type of malaria could move from monkeys to humans, say scientists

Scientists are warning that a species of malaria could switch from targeting monkeys to humans. Macaques in south east Asia are a vast source of Plasmodium knowlesi which can spread to people, they write in PLoS Pathogens. They believe that growing human populations and increased deforestation in the region could lead to the parasite switching host. But those changes could also reduce the spread of the disease. Around one million people die each year as a result of malaria. It is caused by parasites and is spread by mosquitoes when they drink blood.

'Huge reservoir'

P. knowlesi is known as the fifth malarial parasite in humans. It mostly exists in monkeys, however, there have been human cases and it has been shown in the laboratory to be able to spread from human to human. In south east Asia, the macaques are the second most common primate after humans. Blood tests on 108 wild macaques showed that more than three quarters were infected with the malaria parasite.

Professor Balbir Singh, from the Malaria Research Centre at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, told the BBC: "they are a huge reservoir of Plasmodium knowlesi." Genetic analysis showed that P. knowlesi had existed in monkeys since before humans settled in south east Asia. The researchers said humans were being infected from the 'reservoir', rather than the disease spreading between humans. Prof Singh raised concerns about what could happen in the future: "We don't know how mosquito behaviour will change. "With increasing human populations and deforestation we may get a shift to humans. The number of malaria cases is coming down so there is also decreased immunity. Or would deforestation reduce numbers? It could go either way."

Dr Hilary Ranson, from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said: "It seems a very reasonable thing to speculate. "Deforestation or any perturbation of the ecosystem frequently leads to humans being exposed to an expanded range of biting insects and the pathogens they transmit, yellow fever is a good example of this." She said if humans catch the parastite more often then P knowlesi may evolve to target humans. "To me the important message is that disruption of the environment exposes people to a range of known and potentially unknown pathogens transmitted by blood feeding insects that do not typically feed on humans" she added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13001294
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waltky · May 13, 2012

Bednets help reduce malaria deaths...

UN: Bed Nets Sharply Reduce Malaria Deaths Among Sudanese Refugees
May 12, 2012 - The United Nations is reporting that malaria has dropped from being the leading cause of death among refugees living along the Sudan border. Among the locations where the new malaria-reducing strategies are being employed is the Kakuma Camp for Sudanese refugees in northern Kenya.

Not long ago, malaria killed more Sudanese refugees than any other disease. But now, while it is still deadly, the U.N. reports it is only the fifth leading cause of death among the estimated 50,000 Sudanese refugees living in the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. The reason - a five-year campaign called Nothing-But-Nets run by The United Nations Foundation. Nothing-But-Nets is the largest grassroots campaign in the world and it hopes to end malaria deaths by 2015.

Now, Nothing-But-Nets has launched an emergency appeal to send 100,000 life-saving bed nets to help thousands of South Sudanese refugees fleeing conflict and violence along the Sudan border. Thirty-seven-year-old Achol Deng is a mother of three from Jonglei state. She is among thousands of new arrivals in the Kakuma refugee camp. Deng received mosquito nets that she will need to save her young family during the rainy season. Deng says the mosquito net she received will protect her children if she uses it the way she was instructed. She says she hopes because of the net, her family will be free from malaria.

Refugees free from the disease are what malaria campaigners, partners, and supporters want to see as they make a two-day visit to the Kakuma refugee camp to distribute mosquito nets. Chris Helfrich is the Director of the U.N. Foundations Nothing-But-Nets campaign. On a recent visit to the Kakuma camp he says life is tough enough for refugees, and they should not have to worry about dying from malaria. Its a tough situation here in Kakuma, obviously, but we are happy to bring hope and do a little of something; these people, they have very tough lives but we are happy to bring nets because with everything else they have to deal with, malaria shouldnt be one of them.

MORE
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waltky · Aug 6, 2012

Dat other malaria parasite...

Scientists unravel 'other' malaria parasite's DNA code
5 Aug.`12 - Scientists said Sunday they had unravelled the genetic codes of parasites responsible for the bulk of malaria cases outside Africa, and found they were scarily diversified and may be harder to kill.

In a study published in Nature Genetics, researchers said they had sequenced the genomes of four strains of Plasmodium vivax -- a parasite that infects about 100 million people every year. Other research had found that 10 to 20 percent of P. vivax cases occur in Africa south of the Sahara -- a region mainly affected by the P. falciparum parasite which causes the most malaria deaths worldwide. Outside of Africa, P. vivax accounts for half of all malaria cases, mainly in the Middle East, the Western Pacific and Central and South America.

Both parasite species are transferred by Anopheles mosquitos. P. vivax is more resilient than its deadlier, tropical cousin, and can stay in remission for longer and tolerate cooler climates. Yet much less is known about P. vivax, and less attention has been paid to unravelling its genetic code than that of P. falciparum. With their research, a team from India and the United States say they have tripled the number of genome sequences available for P. vivax.

They said they observed an "extremely high genomic diversity", suggesting it may be even harder than for P. falciparum to develop a single vaccine targeting several different strains of P. vivax. In 2010, malaria infected about 216 million people and claimed an estimated 655,000 lives -- mainly in Africa where a child dies of the disease every minute, says the World Health Organisation. Symptoms include fever, headache, chills and vomiting which if not treated within 24 hours can progress to severe illness and even death.

In a second Nature Genetics report, scientists in Japan and the United States said they had sequenced the genomes of three strains of P. cynomolgi -- a sister species to P. vivax and a cause of malaria in Asian Old World monkeys. Since it is so closely related, information on the DNA code of P. cynomolgi "provides the foundation for further insights into traits... that will enhance prospects for the eventual elimination of vivax-caused malaria and global malaria eradication," they wrote.

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-unravel-other-malaria-parasites-dna-code-163439492.html
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waltky · Aug 24, 2012

Malaria mosquitos are becoming resistant to insecticides...

Birth Control Plugs Male Malaria Mosquitoes
August 22, 2012 - A team of scientists at Yale University is working on a new birth-control drug for male mosquitos that could slow the malaria epidemic, a disease that sickens more than 215 million people, killing 655,000 each year.

Only female Anopheles gambiae mosquitos transmit malaria to humans and they are the principle vector for the disease. But chemistry professor Richard Baxter and his team at Yale University are focused on the males. Malaria mosquitos mate in airborne swarms. Unlike any other insect, the male inserts a gooey plug to seal its sperm inside the female during mating to ensure reproductive success.

At a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia this week, Baxter and his colleagues announced a new approach for screening chemical compounds that would inhibit formation of the mating plug. This sterile insect technique has been successfully deployed in Africa against tsetse flies that transmit sleeping sickness, and in the United States to control the screwworm fly, which was once responsible for millions of dollars in losses in the cattle industry and has since been eradicated.

Baxter says this is important because malaria mosquitos are becoming resistant to insecticides and adapting to indoor control measures by biting outdoors, during the day. So the idea is if we can actually suppress the mosquito, we will prevent the transmission of the disease and then eventually if you prevent transmission for several seasons, you will eradicate the parasite that itself causes the disease without eradicating the mosquito.

Over the next several months, Baxter will test various chemicals to see which ones disable the proteins, so mating would be unsuccessful. If that works in the lab, then we can move on to semi-field trails, where we have a large cage, which is outdoors," he says. "That would test the efficacy of the compound in a more realistic setting. After mosquitos are fed the inhibiting compound, the modified males would be released to mate with wild females. With no resulting offspring, the population would be reduced without the use of pesticides.

Source
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waltky · Oct 24, 2012

Are pharmas gettin' rich off international malaria scheme?...

Concern raised about finance scheme for malaria drugs
24 October 2012 - Combining drugs can reduce the risk of resistance

The charity Oxfam has cast doubt on an international scheme that aims to boost the provision of the most effective treatment for malaria. The UK government has contributed £70m to the Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm). Oxfam says there is no evidence the programme has saved the lives of the most vulnerable people. The body behind the AMFm says an independent study shows it has improved access and reduced drug prices.

The scheme was introduced three years ago by the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria. It acts as a global subsidy to provide greater access to combination therapy for malaria, particularly through private-sector drug retailers in developing countries. The idea is to reduce the use of older treatments that carry a higher risk of resistance, and to untap the potential of the private sector in reaching remote communities.

More than 200 million people contract malaria every year and 655,000 die from the disease - most of them are young children. The scheme is being piloted in seven countries including Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria. Its future will be considered at a meeting of the Global Fund's board next month. Oxfam has criticised it as "risky and dangerous".

The charity's senior health policy advisor, Dr Mohga Kamal Yanni, said: "It is dangerous to put the lives of sick children in the hands of a shopkeeper with no medical training, and to pursue a scheme that doesn't help those people who need it the most. "There is no cheap option or short cut to combat malaria. "The AMFm is a dangerous distraction from genuine solutions like investing in community health workers, who have slashed the number of malarial deaths in countries such as Zambia and Ethiopia. "The Global Fund board must act on the evidence and put a stop to the AMFm now." The Global Fund said Oxfam's claims were "simply untrue".

More http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20046199
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waltky · Oct 25, 2012

Outdated drugs have no affect on DR-malaria...

Outdated Drugs Slow Nigerian Malaria Treatment
October 25, 2012 A large percentage of people killed by malaria each year are in Nigeria, and the disease is the countrys number one killer of small children. Health officials say modern life-saving drugs are available but the widespread use of out-dated drugs on a resistant strain of malaria continues to cost lives.

In this hospital in Nigeria's Zamfara State, these small patients have malaria. Mothers travel for hours to get to treatment for their children because there is no medicine in their villages. "I brought the baby here because I noticed he had a high fever, and then he got diarrhea, explains a mother. Aid workers say the current surge in malaria began over the summer, and patients continue to pour in. "At the end of July, my team called me and said, Malaria exploded," says Chloe Wurr, a physician with Doctors Without Borders in the northern state of Sokoto. "We have so many children coming. Some of them arrived and we could barely keep them alive. They died before we could give them treatment."

Wurr says one out of every 10 children with severe malaria here dies, and that's with the best of care. "Heath personnel are often very committed and want to help their community but they often dont have the resources to treat people," she said. "If I do find any treatment present, its usually that that health worker has gone to a local pharmacy and purchased a drug and the drug they are most likely to purchase is chloroquine. The doctor says chloroquine can treat malaria in some countries. But in Nigeria, the disease has been resistant to the drug since the 1980s. There are drugs that have been effective against malaria in Nigeria for the past decade and they are known as ACTs.

However Doctors Without Borders says the vast majority of clinics they have visited in the country don't have them, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says they are not available to most Nigerians. The Nigerian government says its planning to increase ACT availability along with providing more bed-nets, which can keep the mosquitoes that transmit the disease from biting in the night. But with the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) saying that 250,000 Nigerian children under the age of five die every year from malaria, aid workers claim the program has a long way to go.

Source
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waltky · Jan 18, 2013

Biological Mechanism of Malaria Found...

Researchers Discover the Biological Mechanism of Malaria Infection
January 17, 2013 - Researchers say they have discovered how the malaria parasite gains a foothold inside the human body, causing the life-threatening illness. The finding could lead to a new treatment for malaria - using a drug thats already in clinical trials for use against another condition.

After taking a blood meal, experts say the malaria-infected female Anopheles mosquito injects about 1,000 parasites into the bloodstream. The microorganisms quickly reproduce after each one enters a red blood cell, according Doron Greenbaum, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania. Each parasite divides from one into say 24 to 32 parasites in 48 hours. So you can imagine that an initial thousand parasites can grow very fast, Greenbaum said.

Greenbaum says he and his colleagues discovered that inside the red blood cells, the parasites utilize a series of proteins to reproduce. After sapping the cells of their nutrient machinery, the new-born parasites burst through the cell walls and back into the blood stream, where they infect new blood cells, producing millions more offspring. After a one- to two-week incubation period, the parasitic infection causes the often fatal symptoms associated with malaria, including very high fevers, chills and sweats.

The discovery of this protein pathway inside the red cell could lead to the use of a new oral medication -- called sotrastaurin -- to treat the deadly infection. The malaria pathogen targets a particular enzyme called PKC, which weakens the the protein chain, dismantling the cells and causing them to collapse. But sotrastaurin blocks P. falciparum's interaction with PKC. Without that interaction, Greenbaum says, the parasites cant reproduce. They are sort of trapped inside the host cell and if they cant get out, they cant continue their lifecycle and within a couple of hours, they start to die, Greenbaum said.

Researchers led by Greenbaum tested the experimental drug, now in clinical trials to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients, and the compound dramatically reduced the number of P. falciparum malaria parasites in infected laboratory mice. Because sotrastaurin targets human cellular proteins, Greenbaum says P. falciparum cant develop resistance to the drug which has made quinine and artemisinin drugs to treat malaria less effective in recent years. An article by Doron Greenbaum and colleagues at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland describing how the malaria parasite reproduces itself is published in the journal Cell, Host and Microbe.

http://www.voanews.com/content/malariar-research/1586222.html
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Feces transplant may relieve severe diarrhea, study says
Fri, Jan 18, 2013 - It may sound like the most unappealing treatment available, but a European study has concluded that inserting fecal material from a healthy person into the gut of somebody with severe diarrhea may cure their problem better than antibiotics.

The study, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved patients who had repeated bouts of diarrhea caused by a bacterium known as Clostridium difficile, which can take over the intestines after antibiotic treatment has killed off the beneficial bacteria found in the gut. About 3 million people in the US are infected annually with the bacterium, known as C diff, which spreads mainly through hospitals, nursing homes and doctors offices. When it controls the gut, it can be hard to eradicate. Antibiotics typically only work in 15 percent to 26 percent of patients with C diff, and after repeated rounds of treatment, the drugs become less effective. The efficacy of antibiotic therapy decreases with subsequent recurrences, and it seems reasonable to initiate treatment with donor-feces infusion after the second or third relapse, researchers led by Josbert Keller of the University of Amsterdam wrote.

Keller and his colleagues compared three treatments in a small trial. Thirteen volunteers with C diff received a standard antibiotic four times a day for 14 days. After 10 weeks, four were free of bacteria-related diarrhea. Another 13 patients had the same drug therapy after drinking a solution to clean out the bowel, known as bowel lavage. That worked in three cases. The remaining 16 volunteers, had a brief treatment with the antibiotic, combined with bowel lavage, followed by the infusion of 500 milliliters of diluted donor feces through a tube that went into the nose, down the throat and into the small intestine. In the three cases where the treatment failed, the doctors re-treated patients with fecal material from a different donor. That worked in all but one case.

Among the volunteers in the non-transplant groups who had a relapse, 18 were later given a fecal transplant. It cured 15 of them, although four of the 15 needed two treatments. Ive done 90 of these now in the last four-and-a-half years, said Colleen Kelly of Brown Universitys Alpert Medical School, who was not connected with the study, but uses fecal transplant in her practice. In patient after patient who has failed multiple courses of antibiotic, if you give them a dose of stool, they get better, she said. When side effects were tallied in the transplant group, 94 percent of patients reported diarrhea, 31 percent had cramping and 19 percent had belching, but all of those disappeared within three hours. Another 19 percent ultimately reported constipation after treatment.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2013/01/18/2003552842
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waltky · Apr 12, 2013

New, bio-synthetic version of the drug could be a major advance in the battle against malaria...

Synthetic Malaria Drug Made Through Biotech, Yeast
April 11, 2013 - The World Health Organization says more than 200 million people - mostly in sub-Saharan Africa - were infected with malaria in 2010. The mosquito-borne parasitic illness annually kills 650,000 people, a majority of them young children.

The most effective anti-malaria treatment developed so far is artemisinin, a plant-derived drug that is expensive and often unavailable. Now, after a decade-long research effort, scientists have found a novel way to cheaply mass-produce artemisinin. The new, bio-synthetic version of the drug could be a major advance in the battle against malaria. Whenever he travels to Africa, Jack Newman says he arrives prepared with his own supply of artemisinin. I always keep it in my back pocket in case I get malaria," said Newman. "Again, in three days you are cured. The American researcher hopes others infected with the parasitic illness might soon have easy access to the drug, too. Newman is co-founder of Amyris, a U.S. biotechnology company that, in collaboration with researchers at the University of California Berkeley and the Canadian National Research Council, developed a process for making large quantities of a semi-synthetic version of artemisinin, offering people with uncomplicated malaria a cure in just three days.

A young girl with malaria rests in the inpatient ward of the Malualkon Primary Health Care Center in Malualkon, in the South Sudanese state of Northern Bahr el-Ghazal

Artemisinin is a compound that until now has been derived exclusively from an ancient, bitter herb called wormwood. It is up to 95 percent effective in curing uncomplicated malaria infections but, because it is derived from a plant, artemisinin is frequently in short supply, and expensive. Newman and his colleagues figured out a way to make an unlimited supply of artemisinin using a technique that combines biotechnology and a simple yeast fermentation process. He says they extracted DNA from the wormwood plant and inserted it into yeast cells ..to fire up a big fermentation, like beer fermentation, but instead of making beer, you are actually making [an] anti-malarial drug," he said. "And you can do it in hundreds of thousands of gallons and, of course, make it in an industrial fashion, the same way we make penicillin; very, very inexpensively. The process yields a chemical precursor to artemisinin, which is used in the production of the drug.

The innovation was made possible in large part by grants totaling $53.3 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the drug development arm of PATH, an international non-profit group that has been leading the fight against malaria and other diseases. PATH helped move the artemisinin research out of the UC Berkeley labs to Amyris for scale-up, and then to the pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur, for production of the yeast-based artemisinin. The company says it is distributing the drug free of charge. Sanofi also plans to share the recipe with other drug makers so they, too, can use the technology to manufacture and distribute it on a no profit, no loss basis, according to Amyris's Jack Newman. Basically, by using synthetic biology, weve been able to stabilize the production so theres always material available and make it at a very low cost," he said.

Newman says the yeast-based drug is identical to plant-derived artemisinin in terms of effectiveness. It is being formulated with a second anti-malaria compound to reduce the chances of drug resistance. So far, Newman says, Sanofi plans to make 70 million doses of what he calls malaria cures this year. Using synthetic biology, next year the company will scale up production to 120 million doses, which will be distributed globally pending World Health Organization approval. Jack Newman and his colleagues describe their production of a semi-synthetic version of the anti-malarial drug artemisinin in an article published in the journal Nature.

Source
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waltky · Apr 25, 2013

Progress in the fight against malaria - but more needs to be done...

US Promotes Active Surveillance in Global Fight Against Malaria
April 24, 2013 WASHINGTON In the 13 years since the United Nations first marked April 25 as World Malaria Day, dramatic progress has been made in preventing, controlling and treating this deadly tropical disease. Experts believe that with improved surveillance and more diligent treatment efforts, the disease could be soon be eradicated. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, is playing a major role in those malaria eradication efforts.

The CDC, headquartered in Atlanta, conducts scientific research and provides technical support to countries around the world on how to deal with malaria, a leading cause of illness and death in many of the countries affected by this mosquito-borne disease. "The CDC has documented that in some of these communities, one out of every four medical visits of children was for malaria. One out of every two units of blood used for transfusion was for malaria. And in communities where they have implemented good control measures, weve seen essentially zero cases of malaria with good control and zero deaths. So we know tremendous progress is possible, said Tom Frieden, director of the CDC. But in 10 countries with the highest incidence of malaria, experts say more resources are needed to prevent a resurgence of the illness.

Testifying before the U.S. Congress this week on his agencys role in global disease eradication, Frieden said the challenge in the fight against malaria, which in Africa alone kills one child every minute, is staying one step ahead of the malaria parasite. Frieden cited the need for better public health surveillance, and urged Congress to fund better detection tools. He held up for lawmakers a diagnostic computer chip capable of separating and then sorting through the billions of "letters" in the malaria microbes genetic alphabet, giving doctors critical information in a mere four hours. There are actually more than 10 million individual wells on this chip. We can take the fragments of DNA and with the supercomputer, put them back together like a jigsaw puzzle with tens of thousands of pieces to figure out where the connections are, whether its resistant, how its spreading and whether its becoming more virulent, Frieden said.

Other challenges in the war on malaria, according to Frieden, are developing effective malaria vaccines and maintaining the integrity of artemisinin, the most effective drug available to treat malaria. The parasite has developed resistance to other drugs that used to be considered certain cures for the disease. But some 30 percent of malaria cases in Southeast Asia now show evidence of resistance to artemisinin. Virtually every new drug in the pipeline, according to the CDC director, is either an artemisinin-related product or synthetic artemisinin, and if malaria treatment programs are not well-organized and controlled, the effectiveness of these new drugs also could be compromised.

So, Frieden told members of Congress, a critical weapon in the war on malaria is ensuring that artemisinin is used wisely so it continues to be effective. I think you can think of drug resistance and prevention of drug resistance as something we owe the world, we owe our children. If these antibiotics that weve been bequeathed by people who worked so hard to come up with them are preserved, they can be used to protect lives for many years going forward, Frieden said. Frieden added that eradicating the mosquito-borne illness by 2015 will require unflinching policy commitments and sustained funding by the international community.

http://www.voanews.com/content/malariar-research-health/1648404.html
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See also:

Progress Has Been Made In Containing Malaria, More Needs To Be Done
April 24, 2013 - Malaria once afflicted people in nearly every country on the planet. Insecticides and eradication campaigns over the past century have contained this mosquito-borne parasitic disease to fewer than 100 countries. Yet in those mainly tropical countries where malaria is still prevalent, it kills more than 650,000 people each year, most of them children.

For every minute that goes by, a child under five years of age dies of malaria. Malaria has been diagnosed on every continent, but sub-Saharan Africa is the region most afflicted. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads malaria research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, calls the parasitic disease one of the world's worst killers. Weve made substantial progress in a global community way with malaria because there are several countries that predict that by 2015 they will have substantially -- by more than 50 percent and up to 75 percent -- decreased the incidents of malaria. Having said that as the good news, the sobering news is that we still have 660,000 deaths per year from malaria, Fauci said.

Multiple strategies have been used to fight malaria. Bed nets treated with insecticide protect against mosquito bites. Those infected are treated with drugs early before their disease turns deadly. Pesticides are sprayed to control mosquito populations. Researchers, including those at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, are working on changing the mosquito that transmits the parasite that causes malaria. "We could stop this [disease] and control the mosquitoes by either eliminating them, which is very difficult to do, or by treating them to make them less effective in carrying the infection," said Dr. Peter Agee, the director of the malaria research program at Johns Hopkins.

Agee says Johns Hopkins has had great success with the mosquito treatment strategy in Zambia, where its researchers are working with an established hospital. "The burden of disease has been knocked down by 98 percent in a decade. So we've gone from 1,500 children being admitted to the hospital each year to a couple dozen," Agee said. But the success of the global anti-malaria campaign could also be its weakness, according to Dr. Fauci. "My concern about even saying theres good progress is that we have been here before, not only with malaria but with other diseases. When you start to see a down-tick in things, people say, 'Well, we have the process or the disease under control. We can move on to emphasizing other things' -- which would be a really bad mistake," Fauci said.

Fauci notes there is no vaccine yet against malaria; mosquitoes that transmit it are becoming resistant to pesticides; and in some places, the malaria parasite is becoming resistant to the drug that treats it. Complacency and cuts in funding could allow malaria to reestablish itself in areas where it has been reduced or eliminated. And the human stakes are still high: in the time it has taken for this report, three more children have died from malaria.

http://www.voanews.com/content/world-malaria-day/1648429.html
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Controlling Malaria Improves Health And Boosts Economy
April 24, 2013 - The World Health Organization (WHO) says malaria is preventable, treatable and can be defeated. In marking World Malaria Day, which falls on April 25, WHO says investing in malaria control pays big dividends in terms of improved health and economic development.

Malaria is a major cause of death and illness. Globally, the World Health Organization reports some 3.3 billion people are at risk of this disease, primarily in Africa. Although malaria - a mosquito-borne parasitic infection of the blood - is preventable and treatable, WHO notes it continues to infect more than 200 million people and kill an estimated 660,000 every year. Most of these deaths are among children under the age of five, 90 percent of whom are in Africa. But, these painful statistics belie the enormous advances that are being made in malaria control. The United Nations reports the MDG or Millennium Development Goal target of halting and reversing the incidence of malaria is now in sight. It says 50 countries are on track to reduce their malaria burden by at least 75 percent by 2015.

WHOs Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, Dr. Fatoumata Nafo-Traore, says malaria control interventions are effective when used in an integrated manner. She says prevention, rapid diagnosis and treatment measures must all be available at the same time. So that you use bed nets or spraying the houses so that you bring down the density of the vector [disease carrier]," said Nafo-Traore. "Then you reduce the transmission of the disease. While doing prevention, you need to continue treating those who are affected. And to be able to treat them, you need to diagnose. WHO notes these global anti-malaria efforts have succeeded in preventing 1.1 million deaths and averting 274 million cases between 2001 and 2010. WHO reports 14 endemic countries (countries where malaria thrives) account for 80 percent of all malaria cases, with 40 percent of the malaria burden in three countries - the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and India.

Dr. Nafo-Traore says progress in controlling malaria is slowing because the funding is drying up. She says an annual shortfall of $3 billion is starting to slow the scale-up of key malaria interventions in Africa. She says $3.6 billion is needed immediately to be able to maintain universal coverage of malaria control interventions in Africa through 2015. Studies show malaria places an enormous burden on African economies, resulting in massive losses to economic growth.

Dr. Nafo-Traore says investing in malaria means investing in development. She says the return is high and cost is low. Personally, I do not see a best investment than this one," she said. "If you put $1 in malaria control, the return on investment is $46 U.S. If you look at the cost to prevent, to treat and to diagnoseIt is $5.5, yup $5.5 U.S. Among the most serious challenges ahead is the emerging resistance of the malaria parasite to drugs, and mosquitoes to insecticides. The U.N. health agency is worried that growing resistance to Artemisnin-based Combination Therapies, the most effective anti-malarials on the market, is emerging in Asia-Pacific. The World Health Organization warns hard won gains in combating malaria could unravel, if resistance were to spread to other regions.

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Black Monarch · Apr 25, 2013

We must exterminate the mosquitos. We're going out there to destroy them. Not to study, not to bring back, but to wipe them out.

Margot said: ↑

In the early 1940s 98% of children under age one year in al Hasa had malaria.. until Aramco used DDT to erradicate it..

Why isn't that being done in Darfur?
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Because DDT makes the shells of bald eagle eggs very thin and fragile, and Darfur is home to lots of bald eagles?

I have no bloody clue.

waltky · May 10, 2013

Malaria hope: Resistant mosquito...

Malaria hope: Bacteria that make mosquitoes resistant
9 May 2013 - Researchers have found a strain of bacteria that can infect mosquitoes and make them resistant to the malaria parasite.

The study, in the journal Science, showed the parasite struggled to survive in infected mosquitoes. Malaria is spread between people by the insects so it is hoped that giving mosquitoes malaria immunity could reduce human cases. Experts said this was a first, distant prospect for malaria control. Malaria is a major global disease. The World Health Organisation estimates that 220 million people are infected annually and 660,000 die.

Challenge

The study at Michigan State University in the US looked at the Wolbachia bacterium, which commonly infects insects. It passes only from females to their offspring. In some insects the bug is exceptionally good at manipulating insects to boost the number of females for its own ends. Wolbachia kills male embryos in some butterflies and ladybirds. In other situations, it can produce males that can breed only with infected females, and even allows some female wasps to give birth without mating. Malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquitoes are not naturally plagued by Wolbachia, yet laboratory studies have shown that temporary infection made the insects immune to the malaria parasite.

The challenge was to turn a temporary infection into one that would be passed on. The research team found a strain of Wolbachia that could persist in one species of mosquito, Anopheles stephensi, for the entire length of the study - 34 generations. Malaria parasites found it difficult to cope in these mosquitoes, with parasite levels fourfold lower than in uninfected bugs. Research in Australia has shown that a different strain of Wolbachia can prevent the spread of dengue fever by mosquitoes. That research is more advanced and has been shown to work in large trials in the wild.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US, said this study was a proof of concept that the same could be done for malaria. "If you can get it to survive and proliferate in the environment of mosquitoes in malaria-stricken areas, this could conceivably have an important impact on the control of malaria. "I think the potential for this is very important. The implementation will be the challenge."

'Struggle to spread'
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waltky · Aug 3, 2013

Government warns against use of anti-malaria drug...

Federal officials issue strong new warning about anti-malaria drug
August 2, 2013 Federal drug officials have issued a strong new warning about a controversial anti-malaria medication once routinely given to U.S. troops, some of whom say it damaged them permanently.

The Food and Drug Administration ordered manufacturers of mefloquine hydrochloride to give the medicine a black box label, the agency's strongest warning, reserved for drugs with significant risks of serious side effects. The FDA said that some neurological and psychiatric side effects can last for months or years after a patient stops taking the drug. The medication was approved by the FDA in 1989 under the brand name Larium and quickly became a leading drug for preventing and treating malaria among travelers and the military. While other drugs must be taken daily, one tablet a week of mefloquine offers protection against the sometimes-deadly mosquito-borne parasite, including against strains that are resistant to other medications.

But the drug has long carried warnings tying it to dizziness, seizures, insomnia, anxiety, depression and strange dreams. One clinical trial found that 29% of travelers who took mefloquine experienced at least one of those side effects. There is also evidence suggesting a link to violent behavior, including suicide. Amid growing concerns, the drug fell out of favor over the last decade. Roche, its original manufacturer, stopped selling Larium in the U.S. in 2008. The generic versions still on the market accounted for 226,000 of the 5.4 million U.S. prescriptions for anti-malaria drugs last year, according to IMS Health, which tracks drug trends. The Pentagon, which used the drug widely in Somalia and during the early years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, offered little explanation when it began scaling back its reliance on mefloquine and eventually recommended that the drug be used only as a third choice. Military officials continued to dismiss the claims of veterans who insisted that the side effects could be long-lasting.

The new FDA warning provided those veterans a sense of validation. "I almost fell out of my chair when [the news] was forwarded to me," said Greg Alderete, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who blames his chronic balance and memory problems on the drug, which he took while serving in Somalia in 1993. Alderete said that in 2008 he started to suspect mefloquine after connecting with other veterans of Somalia who were experiencing similar symptoms. He eventually helped launch a Facebook group, Veterans Against Larium, which now has more than 1,100 members. He said most served in Somalia, but the group has also attracted veterans from other wars.

Alderete acknowledged that his depression, anger and anxiety could be the result of post-traumatic stress disorder, with which he was diagnosed. But his chronic dizziness and nausea and an inability to remember words are less easily explained. "There was a big gray zone," he said. "I'm not sure where mefloquine begins and PTSD ends." Doctors from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have insisted that his problems are not related to the drug, he said. The FDA strengthened its warning this week based on a new review of medical literature and reports of patients suffering from dizziness, loss of balance, tinnitus and vertigo, according to a statement from the agency. The symptoms often started after the first dose or two but continued for months or years. In some cases, the damage was deemed permanent. Usually, the neurological symptoms were accompanied by psychiatric ones, including anxiety, confusion, paranoia and depression, which were also long-lasting.

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waltky · Sep 11, 2013

Malaria parasite growing resistant to anti-malaria drug artemisinin...

Rapid Blood Test Reveals Growing Resistance to Malaria
September 10, 2013 ~ Scientists have developed a simple, rapid blood test to determine the malaria parasite's resistance to artemisinin, currently the most effective drug available to treat the mosquito-borne infection. Unfortunately, the drug is becoming less effective. But researchers are hoping the test will eventually help patients with drug-resistant malaria.

More than 200 million people are infected with malaria each year, with a death toll as high as 1.2 million. Most of the infections occur in sub-Saharan Africa. While artemisinin-containing drugs are currently the most effective weapon in the fight against malaria, the parasite that causes it is beginning to develop resistance. Rick Fairhurst, a clinical investigator with the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Maryland, says most malaria patients used to be cured with three doses of artemisinin taken over a three-day period. And now what we are seeing is that patients, like for example in Pursat where I work, we have about 60 percent of people [that] still have parasites at 72 hours, which suggests that these parasites could persist in the patient, which results in them not being cured," said Fairhurst.

Pursat province is an area in western Cambodia. Fairhurst, along with a team of Cambodian and French researchers, developed a rapid blood test that measures how quickly the malaria parasites in blood samples were killed or weakened by the active ingredient in artemisinin. The parasites survival was measured 72 hours after exposure to the artemisinin. If the parasite was still active at that point, the researchers determined that it was unlikely to respond to the drug. Researchers confirmed the finding in patients infected with malaria. Parasites in blood samples taken from people with drug-resistant infections had only a tepid response to artemisinin. Such a test could help public health officials identify pockets of drug resistance and map its spread.

Fairhurst says the blood test could also be used to follow individuals treated with artemisinin. And if eventually we find if parasites are at a certain level of resistance in the laboratory, they have a certain probability of coming back in the patient, we can then say, 'Okay, this person is not likely to [be cured of their infection],' and we can come on top with a second drug," he said. Fairhurst says there are a couple of newer, more expensive anti-malarial agents that could be used but which experts fear could also eventually become ineffective against the parasite. An article on the rapid blood test for artemisinin-resistant malaria is published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

http://www.voanews.com/content/rapid-blood-test-reveals-growing-resistance-to-malaria/1747294.html
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waltky · May 3, 2014

Usin' malaria to kill syphilis???...

Austrian children injected with malaria in 1950s
Sun, May 04, 2014 - An Austrian commission investigating claims that doctors deliberately infected patients with malaria to treat other patients with syphilis said hundreds of people, including orphans in a psychiatric hospital, might have been infected.

The commission started work last year following accusations by former patients who were orphaned children on a psychiatric and neurological ward run by the city of Vienna in the middle of the 20th century. Lawyer Johannes Oehlboeck, who represents some of them, told reporters on Friday that several believe they were used as carriers to keep the malaria parasite alive until it could be injected into syphilis patients, in a medical therapy once thought to be effective.

Malaria is a potentially fatal disease that is usually spread by infected mosquitoes. Most deaths occur in children under 5. Commission head Gernot Heiss said on Friday last week that ongoing investigations of the period from 1951 to 1969 show that 230 people, including some children on the ward, were injected with the parasite, all between 1955 and 1960.

The injections normally caused two weeks of fever as high as 42°C, as well as sudden fever attacks continuing up to two decades. The fever caused by malaria was meant to kill the syphilis infection. The commission has so far examined 5,140 medical histories and Heiss said it expects to end its work next year with a ruling on whether the practices reflected modern medical standards of the time. Heiss said that malaria therapy was recognized and practiced worldwide until the early 1960s. He did not comment on the suspicions by the clients of Oehlboeck, the Vienna lawyer.

In 1927, Austrian psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Jauregg received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for using malaria to treat people with a severe form of syphilis that infects the brain and can cause delusions, psychosis and paralysis. Doctors in Britain and the US also used the treatment, sometimes using mosquitoes to infect their patients. The later introduction of penicillin to treat infections and other therapies ultimately made malaria therapy obsolete.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2014/05/04/2003589557
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waltky · Jun 5, 2014

Artemisinin losing it's effectiveness as malaria becomes drug resistant...

New wave of drug-resistant malaria threatens millions
5 Jun 2014: Scientists in south-east Asia call for pre-emptive strike in Burma jungle to contain resistant strain spreading to India and Africa

When an intense fever overcame 50-year-old Daw Cho Cho last spring, she took the same steps as when she last had malaria. Wary of village medicine and aware of the well-funded clinic across the border, she crossed into Thailand from her Burma village and came to the malaria centre for treatment. Seven years ago, her malaria was cured within a day. This time, it took much longer. Within three days, medication had killed the parasites in her blood and Daw Cho Cho felt normal, her symptoms gone. But a month later, the malaria came back. The drugs were unable to kill all the parasites in her blood, and they multiplied. She is among the thousands who have been infected with an insidiously evolving drug-resistant parasite that may account for 80% of the malaria on this section of the Thai-Burma border. The mosquito-borne illness is becoming resistant to the last anti-malaria drug standing artemisinin largely because of counterfeit medicines and incorrect usage.

A leading researcher at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU), a research centre based on the border and funded primarily by the Wellcome Trust, is taking radical measures to stop the spread of the new strain before it becomes uncontrollable. Dr François Nosten, SMRU's director, has studied malaria in this border region, near where the disease first became drug resistant, for three decades. He believes that in order to stop it spreading to India, then Africa, where the vast majority of the world's malaria cases occur, it's essential to chase the parasite into Burma's forests and pre-emptively treat even people who may not be ill. "If we don't do anything, we think that we know what's going to happen," said Nosten, explaining that as malaria rates decline, the strongest and most resistant strains of the parasite survive and spread. "It has always happened like this in the past, there's no reason to think this time will be any different."

Mosquitoes are commonly seen as the enemy of malaria elimination efforts.

The level of alarm Nosten and other scientists express over drug-resistant malaria contrasts with how it manifests in people, in these early stages. It acts just the same as any malaria, but is more difficult to cure. The number of cases creeps up slowly, spreads, then explodes. "The thing about resistance to anything drugs, antibacterials is that it rises exponentially," said Nick White, a professor with the Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Programme who works with Nosten on this issue. "There's a long period where it doesn't appear to be rising and then it's rising." People who have had the new strain of malaria report that it feels no different to the disease cured in a day by artemisinin combination therapy just a few years ago. That may change, but for now, the malaria itself doesn't cause new symptoms or more complications it's just becoming much more difficult to destroy.

My Yee Thaung, whose nine-year-old son recently had malaria thought to be drug-resistant, said he recovered, slowly, "but he's still not eating very well." These patients are among thousands participating in a nine-week study of their blood. The clinic, one of five malaria centres for Burmese refugees in Thailand run by SMRU, pays their transportation fees and a nominal amount to cover lost wages, and the patients return to give blood samples once a week. The number of malaria cases has shrunk in this region dramatically in the past 30 years, since Nosten and his team began to contain and eradicate it. When Nosten started the first border clinic, the parasite was a major killer, infecting tens of thousands of people each rainy season. Today, there are a few thousand cases each year. But those that remain are more likely to contain a wilier parasite, one that is evolving to evade what was first touted as a miracle drug.

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