Mobile Phone SMS for Malaria Control

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Although malaria is preventable and curable, it is claiming over 30,000 Kenyan lives annually, but with new technology these deaths could reduce drastically. The mobile phone is the latest weapon in the war against malaria, the debilitating disease that is a leading killer in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa.

The aptly named SMS initiative uses the communication gadget to ensure stocks of malaria drugs are available in sufficient quantities where they are needed most, with the aim of eliminating stock-outs and improving accessibility to treatment. [Read more…]

End Malaria Day

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It isn’t very often that a book has the power to save a life. Yes, good books can improve lives, shape lives, even change lives. But when was the last time a book literally helped save a life? If you’re reading this page, the answer is right now.

The Domino Project in conjunction with Box of Crayons is working with Malaria No More to help end malaria.

End Malaria Day

$20 from the purchase of each copy of End Malaria goes to Malaria No More to send a mosquito net to a family in need.

The organization is giving $20 from the purchase of each copy of End Malaria to Malaria No More to send a mosquito net to a family in need and to support life-saving work in the fight against malaria.

In addition to saving lives, buying this book means you can enjoy essays by 62 of America’s favorite business authors, including Tom Peters, Nicholas Carr, Pam Slim, and Sir Ken Robinson. Organized into three main sections—Focus, Courage, and Resilience — all essays in End Malaria share a desire to inspire readers to look within themselves for solutions to their everyday dilemmas and for motivation to realize their desires.

At its core, End Malaria is about doing great work, and at The Domino Project we believe there’s no better work than saving a life. Please share this book with your friends, family, and coworkers, and encourage them to join us on our quest.

More information: End Malaria Day

New Malaria Vaccine Passes Safety Test

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Most malaria vaccines under development work by including genetically engineered versions of just a handful of the thousands of proteins of the Plasmodium parasite. Those modified proteins are designed to trigger an immune response to Plasmodium, after it’s passed into the host’s bloodstream by the bite of an infected mosquito.

In contrast, says researcher Robert A. Seder of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, this new vaccine includes a deactivated version of the entire parasite. [Read more…]

Malaria Vaccine from Mosquito Saliva

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One of the more promising avenues of creating a vaccine for malaria involves going inside mosquitoes’ bodies — typically the source of the disease’s spread — to develop the key component of the vaccine.

Research published online in the journal Science today shows the barriers and future direction for that vaccine. A clinical trial of such a vaccine showed that it was safe, but that it didn’t confer immunity to enough of the study participants.

Read more, via My Health News Daily.

Scientists Target Mosquito-Borne Illness

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Of all the disease-spreading insects in the world, the mosquito poses the greatest menace, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).  As if to underscore that threat, two mosquito-borne viral diseases have begun to spread well beyond their points of origin.  One is dengue fever, a potentially deadly illness, and the other is chikungunya, a debilitating and painful disease from which most people can recover. There are no vaccines to prevent these diseases.  But researchers are working hard to develop vaccines against dengue fever and chikungunya, and to control the mosquitoes that spread them.

Scientists have identified at least 3,000 different species of mosquitoes throughout the world. The Asian tiger mosquito is one that bites during the day.

The tiger mosquito’s bite is more than annoying. It’s responsible for infecting 20 million people a year with dengue fever, a flu-like illness that can result in hemorrhagic fever, shock syndrome, and even death.

“It’s almost completely spread throughout the tropics and subtropics throughout the world,” said Weaver.

Scott Weaver at the University of Texas Medical Branch confirms what other scientists are seeing, mosquitoes that can transmit dengue fever have spread though India, Southeast Asia and Latin America and are finding their way around the world. There were more than 12 confirmed cases this year in Florida, in the southeastern United States.

The tiger mosquito can also spread chikungunya, a debilitating disease that causes extreme joint pain and fever. The illness is spread as well by an African mosquito, which is also expanding its range.  Professor Laura Harrington is an insect specialist at Cornell University. She says it’s not just the mosquitoes’ range that’s changing:

“We’re also seeing changes, particularly with the viruses; we’re seeing changes in their genetic material which often can lead to increased virulence,” Harrington noted.

On top of that, mosquitoes can arrive in new destinations aboard planes and in cars.

“It’s a virus that has the ability to travel on airplanes and in infected people very readily,” Weaver added.

Weaver is working on a vaccine for chikungunya that has successfully protected lab mice from getting the virus. At Cornell, Harrington is working to make the male mosquito infertile.

“The idea is that these modified males that don’t take a blood meal could be released, mate with the wild females, the females wouldn’t reproduce, they wouldn’t take a blood meal, and the population would be eliminated or reduced,” Harrington explained.

Both scientists are concerned that if a way to control the spread of chikungunya and dengue fever is not found soon, both diseases will become established in the United States. Harrington says that techniques that prove successful against these illnesses might also be used to break the cycle of other mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria.

Source: VOA

Mosquitos Developing Resistance to Insecticide Treated Bednets

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Mosquitoes can rapidly develop resistance to bed nets treated with insecticide, a study from Senegal says.In recent years the nets have become a leading method of preventing malaria, especially in Africa.In the Lancet Infectious Diseases, the researchers also suggest the nets reduced the immunity of older children and adults to malaria infection.

But other experts say the study was too small to draw conclusions about the long-term effectiveness of nets.

Read more, via BBC News.

Over-Treating Malaria in Africa

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Prescribing malaria medication to patients who don’t need it wastes precious resources in a country already dealing with drug shortages. It leaves patients untreated for the real cause of their sickness. And it can lead to drug resistance, making malaria parasites harder to eliminate when people really do contract the disease.

So why do health workers ignore negative test results?
[Read more…]

IDRI, USAID to Collaborate on Malaria Vaccine Development

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The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) today announced a new Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), focused on support of a collaboration with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) for the development of a new vaccine against malaria. The collaboration is for the development of a novel malaria vaccine, which combines WRAIR’s malaria antigen CelTOS with IDRI’s potent GLA-SE adjuvant.

Preclinical studies to date have shown that the combination of CelTOS and GLA-SE in a vaccine candidate produces potent immune responses in small animals, resulting in a protective immune response during the infectious mosquito-stage of malaria parasites.

Because of the conserved nature of the CelTOS antigen, immunized mice are protected against other distantly related malaria strains as well. USAID provided funds for WRAIR’s preclinical studies of this antigen, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded IDRI’s CelTOS-specific adjuvant development activities. A phase I clinical trial with human malaria challenge is being funded by USAID, the WRAIR, and the Gates Foundation grant awarded to IDRI.

Malaria is a devastating parasitic disease transmitted through the bite of infected Anopheles mosquitoes. The WHO estimates that more than two billion people live in malarious areas of the world in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. The emergence and spread of drug resistance, production and availability of counterfeit medications, and mosquito resistance to insecticides make the development of a safe, effective, and affordable malaria vaccine critical as an adjunct to other preventive measures. Because CelTOS is essential for establishing parasite infections in both the human and mosquito hosts, IDRI, USAID, and WRAIR are hopeful that the development of the CelTOS – GLA-SE malaria vaccine will provide a significant new approach to a human malaria vaccine, targeting prevention of both human disease and transmission of the parasite back to the mosquito.

“The collaboration with WRAIR illustrates again the broad utility of GLA-SE as a vaccine adjuvant,” Dr. Steven G. Reed, IDRI’s Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer, stated. “We are very excited to be moving this important project ahead and particularly pleased with the validating interest from USAID.”

“The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research is pleased that both IDRI and USAID have partnered with us in helping support the development of malaria vaccines to prevent infection in children worldwide and to protect our men and women serving in uniform in areas of the world where malaria is still a major infectious disease,” said COL Christian Ockenhouse, Director of WRAIRs’ Malaria Vaccine Development Program.

Dr. Carter Diggs, Senior Technical Advisor for the USAID Malaria Vaccine Development Program added that, “In spite of dramatic progress in malaria control, the disease is still a major killer of children in the developing world. USAID is very pleased with this collaboration, which combines exploration of the vaccine potential of an untested, but promising malaria antigen with this leading edge adjuvant system.”

Source: PRNewswire

Microwaves Against Malaria

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced that twelve grantees have advanced to the next level of Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE), an initiative that enables researchers worldwide to test unorthodox ideas that address persistent health and development challenges. The grantees will receive additional funding to continue Phase II of their research over a two-year period.

“Finding solutions to persistent global health problems is a difficult, lengthy and expensive process. GCE was designed to tap the innovators of the world by providing resources needed to explore bold ideas that are typically too risky to attract funding through other mechanisms,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We’re excited to enable further development of novel approaches that can prevent or lessen the burden of diseases that kill or disable millions of the world’s most vulnerable.”

Among projects receiving Phase II funding, Carmenza Spadafora of Panama’s IASI and Jose Stoute of Pennsylvania State University investigate whether malaria can be treated by microwave irradiation.

Grantees who receive Phase II funding will receive up to one million dollars of additional funding over a two-year period.

Fast Company reports: “Malaria drugs are expensive, and the disease is becoming resistant. But nothing can resist microwaves. A new advance might simply explode the parasite inside people’s bodies with a low dose of focused rays. Treatments for malaria, however, have never been a high priority for pharmaceutical companies, and multi-drug resistant malaria is becoming prevalent in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia, while even the most effective drug combinations are losing their punch. Researchers Carmenza Spadafora and Jose Stoute have now hit upon one treatment that no parasite has ever developed an immunity against, and may never be able to survive: microwaves.”

Read more, via Fast Company.

Sources: Fast Company, Gates Foundation

Mobile App for Diagnosing Malaria

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Focusing on the millions of people at risk from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world, Lifelens is a project that has created a smartphone app to diagnose the insidious, mosquito-borne disease. The most prevalent diagnostic tool is the rapid diagnostic test RDT, which is known to be associated with a 60 percent incidence rate of false positive results. That, in turn, results in the treatment of many people who don’t actually have Malaria, driving up the costs of anti-Malaria treatment significantly. The Lifelens project aims to make the process both cheaper and more accurate by analyzing blood digitally instead. [Read more…]