Mosquito News and Research

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PDVI launches new web site for tracking dengue fever epidemics

PDVI, a program of the International Vaccine Institute funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announces today the launch of http://www.denguewatch.org, a news hub for tracking dengue fever epidemics worldwide.

9 Mar 2010

MASSIVEGOOD launched to enable travelers make contributions towards major global health causes

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and President Bill Clinton join today with international recording artists will.i.am and David Guetta, South African singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka, and director Spike Lee, to launch MASSIVEGOOD, an innovative fundraising movement that will enable travelers to make a "micro-contribution" towards major global health causes every time they buy a plane ticket, reserve a hotel room or rent a car.

5 Mar 2010

Chikungunya: Experimental vaccine successfully tested in monkeys

Imagine a mosquito-borne virus that has already infected millions of people in recent outbreaks in South and Southeast Asia, the islands of the Indian Ocean, Africa and northern Italy. Although seldom fatal, it causes highly painful arthritis-like symptoms that can linger for months or even years. It's capable of adapting to spread through a mosquito species common in much of North America. And no vaccine or treatment exists to protect humans from its effects.

5 Mar 2010

Study indicates climate change plays a role in malaria transmission

Climate change is one reason malaria is on the rise in some parts of the world, new research finds, but other factors such as migration and land-use changes are likely also at play. The research, published in The Quarterly Review of Biology, aims to sort out contradictions that have emerged as scientists try to understand why malaria has been spreading into highland areas of East Africa, Indonesia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

4 Mar 2010

Cornell researchers find new protein that may help control mosquitoes from spreading diseases

Cornell researchers have found a protein that may lead to a new way to control mosquitoes that spread dengue fever, yellow fever and other diseases when they feed on humans: Prevent them from urinating as they feed on blood.

4 Mar 2010

Surge in volunteers without overall coordination can make devastating situation worse instead of better

A surge in volunteers following a major disaster can overwhelm a response system, and without overall coordination, can actually make a situation worse instead of better. The outpouring of medical volunteers who responded to the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti in January provides a roadmap for health care providers during future disasters, say the authors of a New England Journal of Medicine "Perspectives" piece that will be published online February 24.

26 Feb 2010

Researchers keep wary eye on emerging tick-borne diseases in Missouri

Stories of environmental damage and their consequences always seem to take place far away and in another country, usually a tropical one with lush rainforests and poison dart frogs.

26 Feb 2010

Campaign to stop sale of electronic mosquito repellents by major airlines begins to bear fruit

A campaign to stop the sale of electronic mosquito repellents by major airlines is beginning to bear fruit with the immediate withdrawal of the products from KLM flights. The issue being that these electronic repellents, sold to airline passengers, many on their way to malaria endemic countries, just don't work.

25 Feb 2010

Flightless mosquitoes could fight dengue, study says

By rendering female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes - the dengue virus vector - unable to fly, scientists say they may be able to slow the spread of the virus which experts believe "affects up to 100 million people a year and threatens over a third of the world's population," the BBC reports. Currently, there is no treatment for dengue nor a vaccine to protect against the virus.

24 Feb 2010

World Vision receives $19M grant from USAID to help families and communities in Haiti

International relief and development agency World Vision has been awarded a $19 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to help families and communities in Haiti affected by the devastating January 12 earthquake in Port-au-Prince.

24 Feb 2010

UCI researchers create new breed of flightless mosquitoes for dengue control

UCI researchers and colleagues from Oxitec Ltd. and the University of Oxford created the new breed. Flightless females are expected to die quickly in the wild, curtailing the number of mosquitoes and reducing - or even eliminating - dengue transmission. Males of the strain can fly but do not bite or convey disease.

23 Feb 2010

Tony Blair participates in the work of Muslim-Christian alliance in Africa led by NIFAA

This afternoon Tony Blair participated in the work of the largest Muslim-Christian alliance in Africa led by the Nigerian Inter-Faith Action Association (NIFAA), with funding support from the Nigerian government, the World Bank, the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty (CIFA), and other international funders.

22 Feb 2010

Walker's book focuses on deaths, genetic deformities and other health issues resulting from environmental pollution

Since the brain-injuring virus needs mosquitoes and pigs to spread, government officials should ban standing water in cemetery cisterns and urban drainage ditches. They should keep industrial "piggeries" away from cities and their populations.

19 Feb 2010

Research on mosquito genes could be used for disease control measures

By unraveling the mysteries that exist within the molecular composition of mosquitoes, a team of Kansas State University researchers is trying to discover how the insects survive a parasite that causes malaria in humans.

17 Feb 2010

NanoViricides signs research and development agreement with Dr. Eva Harris’s laboratory at UC Berkeley

NanoViricides, Inc. (the "Company"), reports that it has signed a research and development agreement with Dr. Eva Harris’s laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley).

17 Feb 2010

Malaria: Nose of mosquito transplanted

Scientists at Vanderbilt and Yale universities have successfully transplanted most of the "nose" of the mosquito that spreads malaria into frog eggs and fruit flies and are employing these surrogates to combat the spread of the deadly and debilitating disease that afflicts 500 million people.

16 Feb 2010

American Red Cross raises $32M in mobile giving for ongoing relief efforts in Haiti

Hundreds of thousands of cell phone users have made $10 donations to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund by sending the word "Haiti" to 90999, raising a record-shattering $32 million in mobile giving for the ongoing relief efforts.

12 Feb 2010

Early stage trial finds malaria vaccine effectively protected young children, study says

An experimental vaccine was found to effectively protect young children from malaria in Mali, Reuters reports. According to the news service, "The vaccine, which uses an immune system booster called an adjuvant from British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, targets the malaria parasite as it is actively infecting red blood cells and causing fever and illness" (Steenhuysen, 2/3).

5 Feb 2010

Scientists identify potential drug therapy target for malaria

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a protein made by the malaria parasite that is essential to its ability to take over human red blood cells.

4 Feb 2010

Findings provide potential new targets to combat malaria

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.