Latest Apicomplexa Stories

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Killing about a million people a year, malaria is one of the deadliest diseases in the world. Ninety percent of its victims live in Africa. The genomes of malaria parasites and humans have been battling one another for tens of thousands of years. Geneticists at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered new evidence of one way the human genome has attacked back. Since different populations show different reactions to the parasites that cause malaria, the...

Press release from PLoS MedicineReporting the findings of a cluster randomized trial carried out in rural Kenya, Beth Kangwana and colleagues find that provision of packs of the malaria therapy artemether-lumefantrine in shops at a subsidized price more than doubled the proportion of children with fever who received drugs promptly. Importantly, whilst enabling cheap and easy purchase of malaria treatment in shops enabled treatment of about 44% of children with fever, this is still much lower...

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Snug inside a human red blood cell, the malaria parasite hides from the immune system and fuels its growth by digesting hemoglobin, the cell's main protein. The parasite, however, must obtain additional nutrients from the bloodstream via tiny pores in the cell membrane. Now, investigators from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have found the genes that malaria parasites use to create these...

A popular "get well" card shows a raccoon saying to a snake, "You wouldn't get these stomach aches if you chewed your food properly."  Vets know, however, that indigestion in snakes and other reptiles often results not from swallowing food whole but from a parasitic infection.  The gastrointestinal disease cryptosporidiosis represents a particularly severe problem:  although it is rarely otherwise serious in mammals, reptiles seem especially prone to it and the condition is often...

Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have overturned conventional wisdom on how cell movement across all species is controlled, solving the structure of a protein that cuts power to the cell 'motor'. The protein could be a potential drug target for future malaria and anti-cancer treatments.By studying the structure of actin-depolymerising factor 1 (ADF1), a key protein involved in controlling the movement of malaria parasites, the researchers have demonstrated that scientists'...

NIH researchers show parasites create feeding ion channels in blood cellsSnug inside a human red blood cell, the malaria parasite hides from the immune system and fuels its growth by digesting hemoglobin, the cell's main protein. The parasite, however, must obtain additional nutrients from the bloodstream via tiny pores in the cell membrane. Now, investigators from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have found the...

Wolbachia are bacteria that infect many insects, including mosquitoes. However, Wolbachia do not naturally infect Anopheles mosquitoes, which are the type that spreads malaria to humans. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that artificial infection with different Wolbachia strains can significantly reduce levels of the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, in the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae. The investigators also determined that one of the...

Press release from PLoS GeneticsA human genetic variant associated with an almost 30 percent reduced risk of developing severe malaria has been identified. Scientists from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM), Hamburg, and Kumasi University, Ghana, reveal that a variant at the FAS locus can prevent an excessive and potentially hazardous immune response in infected children. The study appears in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on May 19.Severe malaria is a major...

Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A human genetic variant associated with an almost 30 percent reduced risk of developing severe malaria has been identified.Scientists from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM), Hamburg, and Kumasi University, Ghana, reveal that a variant at the FAS locus can prevent an excessive and potentially hazardous immune response in infected children.Severe malaria is a major public health burden in Sub-Saharan Africa, where approximately one million...

SILVER SPRING, Md., May 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On May 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the first test to help determine whether a pregnant woman or a person with swollen lymph nodes testing positive for toxoplasmosis, sometimes known as cat scratch disease, developed the infection within the past four months. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090824/FDALOGO) Toxoplasmosis is caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The infection can cause serious...