Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have become the first in the world to synthesize the entire protein that is responsible for life-threatening malaria in pregnant women and their unborn children. The protein known as VAR2CSA enables malaria parasites to accumulate in the placenta and can therefore potentially be used as the main component in a vaccine to trigger antibodies that protect pregnant women against malaria. The research team is now planning to test the efficacy of the protein-based vaccine on humans. The hope is that within 10 years all African girls could be vaccinated against maternal malaria, thereby preventing more than 200,000 deaths a year.
Continue reading Breakthrough by Danish scientists in preventing maternal malaria
In PLoS Medicine this week a study conducted in a multi-country HIV treatment program in sub-Saharan Africa has found that pregnancy rates increase in HIV-infected women after they start antiretroviral therapy (ART).
In sub-Saharan Africa childbirth plays an important role in spreading HIV from mother to child. By the end of 2007 there were almost 3 million HIV-infected people receiving antiretroviral care in poor countries. ART reduces, but does not remove, the chances of a mother passing HIV to her child during birth. In this study Landon Myer of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and colleagues analyzed data from the Mother-to-Child Transmission-Plus initiative (MTCT-Plus) to see how ART impacted on pregnancy rates amongst HIV-infected woman.
Continue reading Antiretroviral therapy associated with increase in pregnancy in sub-Saharan Africa
Doctors at Eastern Virginia Medical School’s Strelitz Diabetes Center have been stalking the culprit responsible for Type 1 diabetes. Now, they are one step closer.
Members of a research team at the center, led by Jerry Nadler, MD, professor and chair of internal medicine and director of the center, have been studying the role of the [...]
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have developed a simple urine test to rapidly predict and diagnose preeclampsia, a common, but serious hypertensive complication of pregnancy.
Dubbed the “Congo Red Dot Test” by the research team, the test accurately predicted preeclampsia in a study of 347 pregnant women, allowing health care providers to offer better preventive [...]
Yale University researchers have found more than two dozen scent receptors in malaria-transmitting mosquitoes that detect compounds in human sweat, a finding that may help scientists to develop new ways to combat a disease that kills 1 million people annually.
These olfactory receptors in the mosquito Anopheles gambiae offer scientists potential new targets for repelling, confusing [...]
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers have identified a key protein used by the malaria parasite to transform human red blood cells, ensuring the parasite’s survival.
Their discovery means researchers have a clear target against which to develop a new class of anti-malarial drugs that destroy the parasite.
Each year more than 400 million people contract malaria, [...]
A new study led by LSTM will investigate whether long-term weekly iron and folic acid supplementation can reduce anaemia without increasing the risk of contracting malaria. The information provided by the study, based in Burkina Faso and running until 2014, will strengthen adolescent health services and develop effective preventative programmes for anaemia control in young [...]
There remains a lack of consensus amongst the medical and scientific communities about any cancer risk from low level radiation, particularly low-dose radiation delivered from computed tomography (CT) scans. However, the study of epigenetics may play a role in determining whether or not future trends of diseases can in fact be linked to utilization of [...]
Compound could be used against HIV-1, Nipah, Ebola and other deadly viruses
Viruses are insidious creatures. They differ from each other in many ways, and they can mutate — at times seemingly at will, as with HIV — to resist a host of weapons fired at them. Complicating matters further is that new viruses are constantly [...]
Chemists at UC San Diego and statisticians at Harvard University have developed a novel way to trace mutations in HIV that lead to drug resistance. Their findings, once expanded to the full range of drugs available to treat the infection, would allow doctors to tailor drug cocktails to the particular strains of the virus found [...]
