Word: plasmodium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...landmine-ridden territory. Soon, however, they could be the ones to put millions of others at risk. On the Thai-Cambodian border, a rogue strain of malaria has started to resist artemisinin, the only remaining effective drug in the world's arsenal against malaria's most deadly strain, Plasmodium falciparum. For six decades, malaria drugs like chloroquine and mefloquine have fallen impotent in this Southeast Asian border area, allowing stronger strains to spread to Burma, India and Africa. But this time there's no new wonder drug waiting in the wings. "It would be unspeakably dire if resistance formed...
...created a genetic map that could serve as an “early warning system” for detecting drug resistance in a malaria-causing parasite. The results of the study, released Sunday in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Genetics, may help in the fight against Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly of the four parasites responsible for human malaria. The lead researcher, Dyann F. Wirth, who is also chair of the School of Public Health’s Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, said that the finding could help producers of malaria vaccines respond to adaptations...
...better understand why malaria has become such a threat and what can be done to stop the disease, it helps to know a little biology. Malaria is caused by four closely related parasites, the deadliest of which is Plasmodium falciparum, which has a particular fondness for anopheles mosquitoes. The parasites enter the bloodstream when an infected mosquito bites a human. Then they multiply inside the host's liver and red blood cells. (That's why pregnant women, who make lots of blood to nourish their growing fetus, are especially vulnerable.) Eventually the red blood cells burst with a new generation...
...genome sequencing of Plasmodium falciparum and the initial lessons that scientists have learned about the parasite are outlined in two new journal articles by Dyann F. Wirth, director of the Harvard Malaria Initiative and professor of immunology and infectious diseases at HSPH...
Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Plasmodium falciparum. Staphylococcus aureus. Streptococcus pneumoniae. Enterococcus faecium. Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The list of microbial scourges that have developed immunity to one or more of the drugs used to treat them is growing ever longer, and in a number of cases physicians are running out of options. In U.S. hospitals, more than 20% of all enterococcus infections, which include infections of the gastrointestinal tract, heart valve and blood, are now resistant to vancomycin, for many years the antibiotic of last resort. Even more worrisome, insensitivity to vancomycin--which nurses and physicians in intensive-care units refer...