Tag: malaria

Another Very Powerful WeaponAn experimental vaccine against malaria, an oftentimes-deadly disease that half the world is exposed to, is still in trials, but it could be in production by 2015.
Jeffrey Brown discusses the potential impact of the vaccine with Glaxo Smithkline CEO Andrew Witty.

LONDON, Dec. 21, 2009 (Reuters) Interfering in mosquitoes' sex lives could help halt the spread of malaria, British scientists said on Tuesday.

A study on the species of mosquito mainly responsible for malaria transmission in Africa, Anopheles gambiae, showed that because these mosquitoes mate only once in their lives, meddling with that process could dramatically cut their numbers.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Fresh efforts and funding to tackle malaria in recent years have brought the goal of eradicating the deadly disease within sight, health experts said on Friday.

Wiping out malaria worldwide could take decades but many countries where it is endemic are on the brink of eliminating the disease, which infects up to 500 million people a year and kills nearly one million worldwide, they said.

A UNIQUE organ that could help in the battle against malaria has been discovered on female bedbugs who suffer serious problems from the amorous attentions of the opposite sex.

The organ offers the females a degree of immunity from infections introduced by violent males.

Immune organs are found nowhere else in the animal kingdom and their discovery should eventually help scientists to develop new techniques to prevent mosquitoes passing malaria and other fatal diseases to people.

Professor Mike Siva-Jothy, of the University of Sheffield, was behind the discovery of the organ, which he said formed a reservoir of white blood cells acting as a first line of defence against sexually transmitted infections.

The females evolved immune organs because of the violent mating techniques adopted by the males, which are armed with needle-like penises that they wield like daggers.

Instead of availing themselves of the female genitalia the male bedbugs simply stab them in the abdomen and inject semen into the abdominal cavity.

The semen migrates through the female's body to fertilise the eggs. Females suffer a 25 per cent higher mortality rate than males because of infections introduced into the wounds during mating.

Females mate only after a meal - they are so engorged, their bodies having swelled by up to 30 per cent, that they cannot escape.