by Walter and Eliza Hall Institute A new technique could provide vital information about a community’s immunity to infectious diseases including malaria and COVID-19. The diagnostic test analyses a blood sample to reveal immune markers that indicate whether—and when—a person was exposed to an infection. It was developed to track malaria infections in communities, to...
by Anna Gotskind, Duke University It seems like the never-ending battle against malaria just keeps getting tougher. In regions where malaria is hyper-prevalent, anti-mosquito measures can only work so well due to the reservoir that has built up of infected humans who do not even know they carry the infection. In high-transmission areas, asymptomatic malariais...
The frigid waters of the Antarctic may yield a treatment for a deadly disease that affects populations in some of the hottest places on earth. Current medications for that scourge — malaria — are becoming less effective as drug resistance spreads. But researchers report in ACS’ Journal of Natural Products that a peptide they isolated from an Antarctic sponge shows promise as a lead...
by Cell Press Immunological signatures can predict whether malaria-infected children will develop fever or other symptoms, suggests a study publishing September 3 in the journal Immunity. Surprisingly, activation of the well-known tumor-suppressor protein p53 is associated with enhanced protection against malaria fever—and increasing p53 in human immune cells and in mice results in a decrease in...
by Case Western Reserve University The ability to hear depends on proteins to reach the outer membrane of sensory cells in the inner ear. But in certain types of hereditary hearing loss, mutations in the protein prevent it from reaching these membranes. Using a zebrafish model, researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have...
Researchers at Kanazawa University have discovered that an insect virus (a baculovirus) can completely eliminate liver-stage malaria parasites in mice, thus offering hope for safer and more effective treatments for the disease than existing drugs KANAZAWA UNIVERSITY Kanazawa, Japan – Currently, few antimalarial treatments exist that effectively kill liver-stage malaria parasites, which can lay dormant...
Enrollment has begun in Phase 1 clinical trial to test the safety of a new investigational drug designed to treat malaria, as well as its effect on the human body. The first-in-human study is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and is...
Leishmania is a microorganism that enters the human body via a sandfly bite. The parasite allows itself to be swallowed up by white blood cells to advance its life cycle. The disease threatens the health of over 500 million people at risk of infection in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas. Credit: CC0 Public Domain...
UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN THE FACULTY OF HEALTH AND MEDICAL SCIENCES In a spectacular new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have discovered a method of diagnosing a broad range of cancers at their early stages by utilising a particular malaria protein, which sticks to cancer cells in blood samples. The researchers hope that this method can be used...
A study involving researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) has found that platelets can attack and kill malaria parasites—reducing the number of parasites circulating in the blood. Credit: CC0 Public Domain The study, which has just been published in the prestigious journal Blood, was led by Associate Professor Brendan McMorran at ANU and Professor Nick Anstey at...
