Latest Neglected diseases Stories
Millersville Professor Takes on Vector-Borne Disease Project MILLERSVILLE, Pa., Jan. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Thanks to a $250,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant we may soon know how climate change will impact our risk of malaria and dengue fever. Dr. Kathleen Schreiber, professor of geography at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, received the grant from the NSF sponsored Vector-Borne Disease Project to measure how environmental temperature change influences the...
A drug-resistant strain of malaria could spread from southeast Asia to Africa in as little as three months, which puts millions of children at risk, according to a warning from a leading expert Wednesday. Nicholas White, professor of tropical medicine at Mahidol University in Bangkok, said its time to bring a war against malaria before it is too late. The new strain is resistant to the drug artemisinin that was first used along the Thai-Cambodian border in 2007. The new longer-to-treat form...
The team found that a bacterium inside the worm acts as a 'disguise' for the parasite, resulting in the immune system reacting to it in an ineffective way. The bacteria protect the worm from the body's natural defences, but once the bacteria are removed with antibiotics, the immune system responds appropriately, releasing cells, called eosinophils, that kill the worm.Antibiotics are successful against the parasite, but the long treatment regime means that it has limited use across whole...
KOLDING, Denmark, Dec. 31, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Bestnet Europe Ltd. has announced the introduction of a new 290 mesh size for Netprotect® LLINs. The new mesh size is being introduced to help fight the battle against smaller vectors such as the vectors of Dengue and Leishmaniasis. "The new mesh size is Bestnet's response to requests for Netprotect® products with mesh sizes that are effective against vectors that are smaller than the typical mosquitoes involved in malaria transmission...
A new formulation of Amphotericin B (AmB) developed by University of British Columbia researchers has been shown to be stable in tropical climates and effective in treating Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL) in mouse models.VL is a blood-born parasitic disease that afflicts 12 million people worldwide, mainly in developing countries and tropical regions. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.5 million new cases of the disease are reported every year, and 60,000 people die from it.AmB,...
Alexander Raikhel's lab identifies a microRNA molecule that controls blood feeding and egg development in Aedes aegypti femalesEach year, dengue fever infects as many as 100 million people while yellow fever is responsible for about 30,000 deaths worldwide. Both diseases are spread by infected female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which require vertebrate blood to produce eggs. The blood feeding and the egg development are tightly linked to how the mosquito transmits the disease-causing virus.Now...
PERTH, Australia, Dec. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- This medical condition is currently endemic in 21 countries across Latin America killing more people in the region each year than any other parasite-born disease including malaria. Moreover its prevalence is growing in non-endemic developed countries including Australia, USA, Japan, Spain and more with around 8 million cases and 100 million people at risk. The novel compounds identified demonstrated oral activity in an in-vivo mouse model of...
Visceral Leishmaniasis program expands to support South Asian regional elimination efforts. San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) November 24, 2010 The Institute for OneWorld Health (iOWH), the US based non-profit pharmaceutical company with offices in San Francisco, USA and India that develops drugs for people with neglected infectious diseases in the developing world, today announced a new program in Nepal and Bangladesh to develop a therapy for Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL) available through a...
As the cholera epidemic in Haiti continues to rage, public health workers are focusing their efforts on treating the tens of thousands who have already been hospitalized with cholera-like symptoms and providing clean water and adequate sanitation to control the disease's spread.Could the United States be doing more to help the situation? In an editorial published in the November 24, 2010, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, vaccine and infectious disease specialists Matthew Waldor...
Study reveals true effects of malaria on African generationsAlmost a third of cerebral malaria survivors developed epilepsy or other behavioral disorders in the most comprehensive study to date of the disease in African children, solidifying the link between malaria and neuropsychiatric disorders that affect hundreds of thousands of children.The research "“ led by Gretchen Birbeck, an associate professor of neurology and ophthalmology in Michigan State University's College of Osteopathic...
Latest Neglected diseases Reference Libraries
The giant roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) is a parasitic worm within the Nematoda phylum. This species can be found throughout the world, but occurs in higher numbers in tropical and subtropical areas. It causes the disease known as ascariasis in its human hosts and infects about one quarter of the entire world’s human population. It displays a sexual dimorphism, with females growing larger than males. Females reach an average body length between 7.8 and 19.2 inches, while males reach a...
Wuchereria bancrofti is a species of roundworm in the Nematoda phylum. This species is spread through a mosquito vector, which means that it is transferred through mosquitos. This species infects over 120 million people in South America, Africa, and other tropical and subtropical areas. It is one of three species of parasitic worm that can cause lymphatic filariasis, which can lead to elephantiasis. The disease is wrongfully named, because the term translates to “a disease caused by...
Wuchereria bancrofti is a species of roundworm in the Nematoda phylum. This species is spread through a mosquito vector, which means that it is transferred through mosquitos. This species infects over 120 million people in South America, Africa, and other tropical and subtropical areas. It is one of three species of parasitic worm that can cause lymphatic filariasis, which can lead to elephantiasis. The disease is wrongfully named, because the term translates to “a disease caused by...
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease with a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family. It is transmitted by the bite of female mosquitoes and is found in tropical and subtropical areas in South America and Africa, but not in Asia. Primates and a few kinds of mosquitoes are the only known hosts. The origin of the disease is most likely Africa. From there it was introduced to South America through the slave trade in the 16th century. There...
Dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), caused by the dengue virus, is among the spectrum of acute febrile tropical disease and is transmitted by mosquitoes. Occurring mainly in the tropics it can be life threatening and is caused by four closely related virus stereotypes of the genus Flavivirus. It was identified and named in 1779. It has a nickname of "breakbone fever" due to it causing sever generalized bodyache. It tends to be more prevalent in the urban districts of its range...
