Latest Apicomplexa Stories

KOLDING, Denmark, Oct. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Bestnet A/S announced today that Doreen Weatherby, US Sales & Marketing Manager, appeared on the October 9, 2011 episode of The EmeraldPlanet television show during an episode entitled "LESS MALARIA: Reaching Community Immunity in Africa through a Proactive Community-Based Health Care Approach and Successful Partnerships." EmeraldPlanet is a worldwide non-profit organization based in the Washington, DC area that is dedicated to identifying...

A new malaria vaccine could be the first to tackle different forms of the disease and help those most vulnerable to infection, a study suggests A new malaria vaccine could be the first to tackle different forms of the disease and help those most vulnerable to infection, a study suggests. The new vaccine is designed to trigger production of a range of antibodies to fight the many different types of parasite causing the disease. Scientists created the vaccine by combining multiple...

Malaria is a major global health concern, and researchers are in need of new therapeutic approaches. To address this concern, a study published Oct. 26 in the online journal PLoS ONE reveals new information about the host cell's treatment of the parasite that causes the disease in mice, opening potential new avenues for research and treatment. The new work, led by Hernando del Portillo of the Barcelona Centre for International Health Research, used a mouse model of malaria infection to...

Researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) College of Public College Health have shown for the first time in a rodent model that the earliest form of malaria parasites can lay dormant in red blood cells and “wake up,” or recover, following treatment with the antimalarial drug artesunate. The study, which appears today in the online journal PLoS ONE, suggests that this early-stage dormancy phenomenon contributes to the failure of artesunate alone, or even combined with other...

LONDON, BRUSSELS, SEATTLE and NEW YORK, Oct. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- First results from a large-scale Phase III trial of RTS,S, published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), show the malaria vaccine candidate to provide young African children with significant protection against clinical and severe malaria with an acceptable safety and tolerability profile. The results were announced today at the Malaria Forum hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in...

Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), among others, have taken the first step in developing a new type of vaccine to protect chickens against coccidiosis, the most important parasite of poultry globally. A vaccine of this type -- based on proteins from the coccidiosis bug rather than being derived from a live parasite -- could be produced on a larger scale than is currently possible so could be used to provide much more widespread...

North American babies who acquire toxoplasmosis infections in the womb show much higher rates of brain and eye damage than European infants with the same infection, according to new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine. Eighty-four percent of the North American infants studied had serious complications of the parasitic infection, including calcium deposits in the brain, water on the brain and eye disease that caused visual impairment or blindness. By contrast, few...

The cayenne tick has been identified as one of the vectors of equine piroplasmosis in horses in a 2009 Texas outbreak, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. The United States has been considered free from the disease since 1978, but sporadic cases have occurred in recent years. In October 2009, in Kleberg County, Texas, a mare was presented for veterinary care with clinical signs of infection, including poor appetite and weight loss. Subsequent investigation and...

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Monash University, and Virginia Tech have used a set of novel inhibitors to analyze how the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, uses enzymes to chew up human hemoglobin from host red blood cells as a food source. They have validated that two of these parasite enzymes called peptidases are potential anti-malarial drug targets. The research appeared in the Aug. 15 early online issue of the Proceedings of the...

KOLDING, Demark, Sept. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Bestnet A/S today announced the international launch of their new "Show You Care" campaign. The new and innovative Netprotect® long-lasting insecticide incorporated mosquito nets (LLINs) being introduced are the only WHOPES recommended LLINs for malaria control that can be custom printed with a logo or message at an affordable price. Netprotect® Customized Logo Nets are intended for purchase by aid agencies, NGO's, Public Private...