Latest Apicomplexa Stories
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online You may want to start washing your hands after petting fluffy, because new estimates indicate that 350,000 people a year in the United Kingdom become infected with toxoplasmosis. The disease is spread by direct contact with cats, or eating contaminated food, according to a report by the Food Standards Agency. Only about one in 10 of the people who have become infected with toxoplasmosis have symptoms. "The biggest threat is to...
When Washington State University and U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinary scientist Don Knowles got word three years ago that a rare but deadly infection was discovered among a group of horses in south Texas, he felt a jolt of adrenaline. Not only were the horses infected with a parasitic disease similar to malaria in humans, but the epicenter of the outbreak was at no ordinary ranch. It was the King Ranch, legendary for its world-class quarter horses, including former winners of the...
Medicines for Malaria Venture has developed a framework to evaluate the risk of resistance for the antimalarial compounds in its portfolio. A paper based on this work: A framework for assessing the risk of resistance for antimalarials in development has been published in the Malaria Journal today. Resistance defines the longevity of every anti-infective drug, so it is important when developing new medicines for malaria, to check how easily promising antimalarial compounds will select for...
NEW YORK, Aug. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Ground-breaking comedy website CollegeHumor.com and innovative charity Malaria No More have teamed up to launch Malarious this World Mosquito Day. Malarious is a collection of twenty-four comedy videos featuring celebrity actors and comedians to help raise money for the fight against malaria. By giving a minimum contribution of one dollar to help Malaria No More save lives, anyone can view all of the Malarious shorts, which will live...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A parasite may be to blame for some suicide attempts, according to research appearing in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Toxoplasma gondii, or T. gondii, lies in the bodies of 10 to 20 percent of Americans, but in most it was thought to lie dormant. However, it appears as though the parasite can cause inflammation over time, which produces harmful metabolites that can damage brain cells. “Previous research has found signs of...
The World Health Organization estimates that in 2011 there were 216 million cases of malaria and 34.2 million people living with HIV. These diseases particularly afflict sub-Saharan Africa, where large incidence of co-infection result in high mortality rates. Yet, in spite of this global pandemic, interactions between the parasite that causes malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, and HIV-1 are poorly understood. However, a new video article in JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, that...
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center may finally have discovered why people with sickle cell disease get milder cases of malaria than individuals who have normal red blood cells. In a finding that has eluded scientists for years, Duke researchers discovered that genetic material in red blood cells may help alter parasite activity via a novel mechanism that alters parasite gene regulation. "One of the most interesting findings in our study is that the human microRNA (very small...
A targeted approach to treating toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease, shows early promise in test-tube and animal studies, where it prevented the parasites from making selected proteins. When tested in newly infected mice, it reduced the number of viable parasites by more than 90 percent, researchers from the University of Chicago Medicine report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This precisely focused therapy combines short strands of "antisense" nucleic acid-like...
IRVINE, Calif., Aug. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Antigen Discovery, Inc. (ADi) today announced that it has received a Phase II Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health. The three-year award, totaling approximately $ 2.5 million, is a continuation of a Phase I SBIR grant to scan the Plasmodium falciparum proteome for protective antigens. The funds will support a...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online After sequencing the genome of several malaria-related parasites, scientists found that the protozoans responsible for the deadly disease are very genetically diverse and therefore difficult to eradicate, according to their report published this week in the journal Nature Genetics. While the genomes of the four sequenced strains of Plasmodium vivax, a parasite that infects about 100 million people each year, indicated that organism’s...
