Parasitology News and Research

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Parasitology is the study of organisms that gain nutrients and protection from their host, without any benefit to the host.

Guineafowl may spread Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus

Turkey raises and releases thousands of non-native guineafowl to eat ticks that carry the deadly Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus. Yet research suggests guineafowl eat few ticks, but carry the parasites on their feathers, possibly spreading the disease they were meant to stop, says a Turkish biologist working at the University of Utah.

30 Nov 2012

Malaria Box helps identify three chemical series that target treatment of NTDs

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) announce today the identification of three chemical series targeting the treatment of deadly neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), through DNDi's screening of MMV's open access Malaria Box.

14 Nov 2012

Risk of Lyme disease to increase this fall: CAPC

Leading parasitologists with the nonprofit Companion Animal Parasite Council say the risk of Lyme disease will increase this fall.

5 Oct 2012

Chloroquine begins to work against malaria

Malaria-drug monitoring over the past 30 years has shown that malaria parasites develop resistance to medicine, and the first signs of resistance to the newest drugs have just been observed. At the same time, resistance monitoring at the University of Copenhagen shows that the previously efficacious drug chloroquine is once again beginning to work against malaria. In time that will ensure cheaper treatment for the world's poor.

3 Oct 2012

New malaria-transmitting mosquitoes: an interview with Jennifer Stevenson, Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

In the area in which we carried out the study, which was in the western Kenyan highlands, the main mosquitoes that have been confirmed to transmit malaria are the females of Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto, Anopheles arabiensis and Anopheles funestus.

28 Sep 2012

TECHLAB to utilize Dynex's Gold SmartKit packaging for ELISA product line

Dynex Technologies, Inc. announced today it has finalized a supply agreement with TECHLAB, Inc. (Blacksburg, VA), allowing TECHLAB to utilize Dynex's Gold SmartKit packaging for their ELISA product line.

20 Sep 2012

FDA clears Meridian Bioscience’s new illumigene Group A Strep test

Meridian Bioscience, Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio today announced that it has received FDA clearance for a new molecular diagnostic test for Group A Streptococcus on the illumigene platform.

18 Sep 2012

Bed nets and insecticides could fail to protect people from new malaria-transmitting mosquitoes

A potentially dangerous new malaria-transmitting mosquito has been discovered in Kenya by scientists from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. This species, which has never been implicated in the transmission of malaria before, poses a threat because it bites humans at times when they are not protected by current malaria control techniques.

17 Sep 2012

Rhomboid enzymes and malaria treatment: an interview with Sinisa Urban

Rhomboid enzymes live in the cell’s membrane where their job is to cut the anchors of proteins, which releases the target proteins from the membrane.

16 Aug 2012

Researchers discover why people with sickle cell disease get milder cases of malaria

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center may finally have discovered why people with sickle cell disease get milder cases of malaria than individuals who have normal red blood cells.

16 Aug 2012

Mapping rhomboid enzymes could eventually lead to drugs to treat malaria

Johns Hopkins scientists have decoded for the first time the "stability blueprint" of an enzyme that resides in a cell's membrane, mapping which parts of the enzyme are important for its shape and function.

31 Jul 2012

Malaria misdiagnosis: an interview with Dr Toby Leslie

Malaria is caused by a multi-staged parasite which is transmitted by the bite of infected female anopheles mosquitoes. It affects millions of people and kills more than 500,000 people throughout the world every year.

26 Jul 2012

Intense war against malaria outlined by two studies in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

A pair of provocative studies in the July 2012 issue of The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (AJTMH) provides a window into the intense ground war now underway against malaria.

4 Jul 2012

New technique accurately determines infants at risk for malaria

A new technique that accurately determines the risk of infants in endemic countries developing clinical malaria could provide a valuable tool for evaluating new malaria prevention strategies and vaccines.

6 Jun 2012

Genetic analysis on Korean mummy reveals unique HBV genotype C2 sequence

The discovery of a mummified Korean child with relatively preserved organs enabled an Israeli-South Korean scientific team to conduct a genetic analysis on a liver biopsy which revealed a unique hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotype C2 sequence common in Southeast Asia.

30 May 2012

New knowledge related to host-parasite interaction in severe malaria

Researchers from Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, the University of Copenhagen and the University of Edinburgh have uncovered new knowledge related to host-parasite interaction in severe malaria, concerning how malaria parasites are able to bind to cells in the brain and cause cerebral malaria - the most lethal form of the disease.

22 May 2012

One in six cancer cases worldwide related to preventable or curable infections

New research shows that one in six cancers - amounting to two million a year globally - are caused by largely treatable or preventable infections.

9 May 2012

Event launches report on U.S. global health R&D

A post on the Global Health Technologies Coalition's (GHTC) "Breakthroughs" blog describes an event to launch a recent report from GHTC and Policy Cures on "data on U.S. investments over the past 10 years in global health research and development (R&D)."

3 May 2012

Dengue infection makes mosquito's blood feeding more efficient

Mosquitoes infected with dengue virus experience an array of changes in the activity of genes and associated functions of their salivary glands, and these changes may lead to increased virus transmission, according to a recent study led by George Dimopoulos, Ph.D., of the Malaria Research Institute and Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

31 Mar 2012

Study confirms innate ability of ticks to adapt to changing climatic conditions

Carnivores in the Iberian Peninsula, such as the Iberian lynx, are under an increasingly serious threat: ticks that can adapt to changing climatic conditions and that can even survive in extremely arid environments. A study headed by Spanish researchers confirms the innate ability of ticks to adapt according to climate.

30 Mar 2012