Lymphatic filariasis is a parasitic disease caused by microscopic, thread-like worms. The adult worms only live in the human lymph system. The lymph system maintains the body's fluid balance and fights infections. Lymphatic filariasis is spread from person to person by mosquitoes.
People with the disease can suffer from lymphedema and elephantiasis and in men, swelling of the scrotum, called hydrocele. Lymphatic filariasis is a leading cause of permanent disability worldwide. Communities frequently shun and reject women and men disfigured by the disease. Affected people frequently are unable to work because of their disability, and this harms their families and their communities.
"Almost certainly, in its deliberations [to select a new Pope,] the conclave of cardinals will consider a number of difficult and well-publicized problems now facing the Catholic Church," Peter Hotez, co-editor in chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, writes in the journal's "Speaking of Medicine" blog.
"It's not a race, exactly, but there's an intriguing uncertainty about whether a former U.S. president or a software magnate will cause the next deliberate extinction of a species in the wild. Will Jimmy Carter eradicate Guinea worm before Bill Gates eradicates polio?" Wall Street Journal commentator Matt Ridley asks in his "Mind & Matter" column.
In this Lancet commentary, John Vertefeuille, Scott Dowell, Jean Domercant and Jordan Tappero of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) examine the state of the public health system in Haiti three years after a 7.0 earthquake struck the country, writing, "Haiti is starting to show that its health services have expanded far beyond those in place before the earthquake occurred."
WHO reports unprecedented progress against 17 neglected tropical diseases, thanks to a new global strategy, a regular supply of quality assured, cost-effective medicines and support from global partners.
Two UCSF teams have received a total of $16 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study new ways to significantly reduce childhood mortality and disease in developing nations.
"Since the last case of naturally occurring smallpox, in 1977, there have been three major international conferences devoted to the concept of disease eradication," an article in the New England Journal of Medicine reports and includes "a brief review of five diseases selected for eradication or elimination that illustrate the potential benefits of such efforts and some of the challenges they pose."
The Washington Post reports on Haiti's efforts to fight lymphatic filariasis, a parasitic mosquito-borne disease that can cause elephantiasis and is present in 80 percent of the country.
Can an innovative wallpaper-like liner help reduce the number of cases of malaria, and if so, will it be cost effective? Donald S. Shepard, a professor at the Schneider Institutes for Health Policy at the Heller School wants to know. And he has gotten the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help. A grant, totaling nearly $500,000 over the next three years, will allow Shepard and collaborators to pursue their research in Kenya and Tanzania.
Thirteen drug companies, the governments of the United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates, the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lions Club and other smaller charitable organizations on Monday announced a joint effort to tackle 10 neglected tropical diseases in a coordinated fashion.
The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and Abbott have signed a four-year joint research and non-exclusive licensing agreement to undertake research on new treatments for several of the world's most neglected tropical diseases, including Chagas disease, helminth infections, leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness.
"The U.K. government has announced a fivefold increase in spending on combating neglected tropical diseases [NTDs] as part of an international effort to help rid the world of a group of infectious diseases that currently affect one billion people and kill more than half a million every year," BMJ reports.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism examines what some experts are calling a serious inequity in public health spending, writing that neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) "together kill more people than maternal mortality and have a higher disease burden than malaria or tuberculosis (TB) and nearing that of HIV/AIDS. However, despite the severity of the situation, funding for NTDs is just a fraction of that spent on other diseases."
In this End the Neglect blog post, Linda Diep, communications and grassroots assistant with the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, discusses how "mapping of Loa Loa Filariasis could help in the innovation of new strategies to eliminate and control onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis (LF), according to a recently released article from the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases."
In a study sponsored by Topaz Pharmaceuticals Inc., a privately held specialty pharmaceutical company, scientists from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst presented data showing that a 0.5% ivermectin (IVM) cream formulation was active against lice eggs from permethrin resistant head lice.
With the help of another $2 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, researchers are moving closer to setting up human clinical trials for a reformulated drug that could be the linchpin of treatment efforts against two debilitating tropical diseases.
Topaz Pharmaceuticals Inc., a privately held specialty pharmaceutical company, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted for filing the New Drug Application (NDA) for the use of ivermectin topical cream as a treatment for head lice infestations in children and adults.
The pharmaceutical company Sanofi and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) on Monday announced a three-year research collaboration to develop drugs for nine neglected tropical diseases, RTTNews reports.
A team led by Thomas B. Nutman, M.D., of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, has completed a large-scale analysis of most of the proteins produced by Brugia malayi, one kind of parasitic worm that causes lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis.
Anacor Pharmaceuticals announced today that it has entered into a development agreement with Medicines for Malaria Venture to develop Anacor's compound AN3661 for the treatment of malaria.
A new study revealed that using treated mosquito nets could drastically reduce the transmission of Japanese Encephalitis to humans.
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