Latest Tropical diseases Stories
Feeling feverish after a visit to the tropics? It may not just be a bout with this year's flu. If you're a Western traveler, malaria and typhoid fever should top the list of diseases to discuss with your doctor when you return, especially following travel to Western Africa or India. In a study of more than 80,000 returned travelers who sought medical care for illnesses, around 3,000 (4 percent) were affected by malaria, typhoid fever and other potentially life-threatening tropical...
NEW YORK, Jan. 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Global partners in the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) have made substantial progress over the past year, with more than 40 countries delivering detailed plans to control and eliminate these diseases and major pharmaceutical companies donating more than one billion treatments to meet 100 percent of drug requests by endemic countries. These successes are outlined in a new report, From Promises to Progress, released today in...
Resistance has cut the useful life of nearly every malaria therapy tried so far Malaria brings misery and death to millions in the developing world each year, and fighting it keeps medical researchers up at night because the mosquito-borne parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which causes the deadliest form of the disease, has developed resistance to every drug thrown at it. Resistance has cut short the useful life of nearly every therapy tried so far, experts say. But now molecular...
Leishmaniasis is the second most mortal tropical parasitic disease A research coordinated by the UAB has succeeded in testing a vaccine against leishmaniasis. The vaccine was tested with the best animal model existing, the golden hamster, and can be produced at low costs by using insect larvae. The research, published in the latest edition of PLoS ONE, is an important step towards the fight against a disease which causes the death of 70,000 people each year in developing countries and of...
University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers have launched groundbreaking research into the spread of potentially deadly drug-resistant malaria in the developing Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, also known as Burma. The scientists, working as part of a large international team coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), have identified several promising genetic markers that could be used to develop tests to identify and track the spread of the newest type of drug-resistant...
National Science Foundation Treatment for snail-borne schistosomiasis works best over the long haul Watch where you jump in for a swim or where your bath water comes from, especially if you live in Africa, Asia or South America. Snails that live in tropical freshwater in these locations are intermediaries between disease-causing parasitic worms and humans. People in developing countries who don't have access to clean water and good sanitation facilities are often exposed to the...
DENVER, Nov. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- What vaccinations should I consider? What are the latest vaccine developments? Are there any new risks? These are common questions not only healthcare practitioners are asking. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120209/LA50271LOGO) Even as common flu vaccination programs appear around the US, new vaccines are being developed to address emerging and long standing health threats. Residents and visitors to Florida and anyone...
The Ebola, Marburg and Lassa viruses are commonly referred to as emerging diseases, but leading scientists say these life-threatening viruses have been around for centuries. In a perspective in the Nov. 9 issue of the journal Science, researchers including a professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) say it would be more appropriate to refer to these viruses as emerging diagnoses. “The infectious agents were identified around the middle of the...
In malaria-endemic countries, 350 million people are predicted to be deficient in an enzyme that means they can suffer severe complications from taking primaquine, a key drug for treating relapsing malaria, according to a study funded by the Wellcome Trust and published in this week's PLOS Medicine. This finding is important as primaquine is recommended in the global action plan to eliminate malaria and is the only drug to prevent malaria relapse. The benefits of implementing a treatment...
Speaking at ASTMH Annual Meeting, researchers say breakthrough could make it much easier to evaluate new drugs and vaccines while also becoming a vaccine itself In a breakthrough that could accelerate malaria vaccine and drug development, scientists announced today that, for the first time ever, human volunteers were infected with malaria via a simple injection of cryopreserved sterile parasites that were harvested from the salivary glands of infected mosquitoes in compliance with...
Latest Tropical diseases Reference Libraries
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...
West Nile virus (WNV) is a virus of the family Flaviviridae. It is part of the Japanese encephalitis antigenic complex of viruses and is found in both tropical and temperate regions. It primarily infects birds but can infect humans, horses, dogs, cats, bats, and other mammals. Humans are generally infected through the bites of mosquitoes and about 90% of West Nile Virus infections are without symptoms. The virion is 45-60 nm and covered with a relatively smooth protein surface. It is...
Marburg virus, or Marburg, is the standard name for the genus of viruses Marburgvirus which contains the species, Lake Victoria Marburgvirus. It causes Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever (MHF) which originated with primates. It originated in Africa and can infect humans and primates. It is in the same taxonomic family as Ebola and both are identical structurally although they elicit different antibodies. It was named after the location of the first outbreak in Marburg, Germany in 1967. The...
Lassa fever, first described in 1969 in Lassa, is an acute viral hemorrhagic fever. Clinical cases were known a decade before this but were not associated with this viral pathogen. It is endemic in West African countries and causes approximately 5,000 deaths. The Natal Multimammate Mouse is the primary animal host. The rodent is a source of protein but the virus is usually transmitted by the contact with the feces and urine of animals accessing grain stores in residences. The lassa virus...
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...
