West Africa Doctors Network News Portal

Researchers from the Institut Pasteur in Paris and the Institut Pasteur in Lille have analyzed the consequences of intensive vaccination of young children against whooping cough on the bacterium agent of the disease. Their observations highlight the importance of continuing bacterial evolution in order to adapt vaccine strategies. consequences of intensive vaccination of young children against [...]

A genetic variation which evolved to protect people of African descent against malaria has now been shown to increase their susceptibility to HIV infection by up to 40 per cent, according to new research. Conversely, the same variation also appears to prolong survival of those infected with HIV by approximately two years. The discovery marks the [...]

MUHC and CHUM researchers demonstrate how 2 specific genes are involved in an innate resistance to HIV infection Some people may be naturally resistant to infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The results of a study conducted by Dr. Nicole Bernard of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) bring us [...]

TORONTO, ON. – New research suggests that not everyone who is bitten by a malaria-infected mosquito develops life threatening health problems according to scientists at the University of Toronto. Malaria causes an estimated 500 million clinical cases worldwide with symptoms ranging from headache, high fevers and nausea to more than 1 million deaths annually. “Malaria has had [...]

A study by researchers in Thailand, Japan, and the UK has shown a negative correlation between dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and the density of the Aedes mosquitoes that transmit the virus. The study, published July 16th in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, explains how current efforts to reduce the mosquitoes may actually increase [...]

In battle with an epidemic that has outpaced nearly all efforts to contain it, researchers are turning to strategies centered on the same antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that have been used successfully to treat HIV in hopes they will be as effective a stronghold for preventing the virus. For women, who make up nearly half [...]

Call for improving malaria prevention among schoolchildren as first study of benefits of malaria treatment for African schoolchildren finds positive health and cognitive benefits Providing preventive treatment for malaria, given once per term, dramatically reduces rates of malaria infection and anaemia among schoolchildren, and significantly improves their cognitive ability, according to new research published today in [...]

Barcelona, Spain: After 30 years of IVF, the rewards of treatment are still largely confined to industrialised countries and those who can afford it. Now, a Special Task Force of ESHRE has set about the immeasurable task of making fertility treatment more accessible to developing countries through a programme of pilot projects, professional awareness and [...]

A single, oral dose of vitamin A, given to infants shortly after birth in the developing world can reduce their risk of death by 15 percent, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study is published in the July 2008 edition of the journal Pediatrics. “It [...]

The public health approach to HIV treatment, in which a limited number of drug combinations is used for all patients in South African programs, works just as well as the highly individualized approach to drug selection used in Switzerland, according to research published in PLoS Medicine. Researchers based at University of Bern, Switzerland and University of [...]

Debilitating illness is major cause of child deaths in developing nations In a development that may lessen the epidemic of diarrhea-related deaths among children in developing countries, scientists in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have discovered a novel compound that might lead [...]

COLUMBIA, Mo. – It takes more than one punch to fight tumors. Often, tumors have more than one way of surviving, and attacking the tumor alone is not enough. Now, in a new study, University of Missouri researchers have developed a new non-toxic treatment that effectively reduces breast cancer cells, by combining a small molecular [...]

Plasmodium. vivax can cause severe malaria associated with substantial morbidity and mortality, show two studies published in PLoS Medicine this week. These findings challenge the current dogma that P. falciparum can be severe and life-threatening whereas P. vivax tends to be mild, according to the related commentary by Stephen Rogerson (University of Melbourne, Australia), an [...]

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS FOR TRAINING IN CANCER RESEARCH 2009-2010

The Day of the African Child has been celebrated on 16 June every year since 1991, when it was first initiated by the Organisation of African Unity. This day honours the memory of the children who, in 1976, were brutally shot down while marching in the streets of Soweto, South Africa to protest the inferior [...]

Groundbreaking research into treating malaria infections in pregnant women has earned Professor François Nosten, Director of the Wellcome Trust-funded Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) in Mae Sot, Thailand, international recognition. Professor Nosten today receives the Christophe & Rodolphe Merieux Foundation Prize, a €400,000 prize awarded to a researcher or research team studying infectious diseases in [...]

In the June 15th issue of G&D, Dr. Sinisa Urban (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) and colleagues reveal a potential role for the rhomboid enzyme, EhROM1, in the pathogenesis of the enteric protozoan parasite, E. histolytica. This discovery posits EhROM1 as a prospective target in the treatment of amoebic dysentery, which affects 1/10th of [...]

The Research Alliance to Combat HIV/AIDS (REACH) is a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded project awarded to Northwestern University in January 2006 to conduct research on HIV prevention in several communities in Nigeria. The project involves collaboration with researchers in Nigeria, particularly at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. As part of this project, extensive [...]

By disrupting the potassium channel of the malaria parasite, a team of researchers has been able to prevent new malaria parasites from forming in mosquitoes and has thereby broken the cycle of infection during recent animal tests. By genetically altering the malaria parasite through gene knock-out technol-ogy, a research team consisting of scientists at the University [...]

Global health program expands to Caribbean, Latin America HOUSTON — June 9, 2008 — Rice University’s global health initiative Beyond Traditional Borders (BTB) is sending 17 students to Africa, the Caribbean and Central America this summer to combat health problems like HIV/AIDS. The BTB international summer internship program, which sent seven undergraduate interns to southern Africa in [...]