MALARIA: African leaders must invest in malaria prevention

July 25, 2011

In a Daily Caller opinion piece, Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, highlights a finding in a recent malaria report that the U.S. government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation "were responsible for 85% of the steep increase in malaria funding between 2007 and 2009." But "[i]f 30 African heads of state were to give up their private jets, a fund of well over $500 million could be generated," Tren writes.
"Several benefits would arise were African leaders to put their money where their mouths are. First, it would help U.S. congressmen to convince the remarkably generous but hard-hit U.S. taxpayers that we have true partners in the fight against malaria and that it is worth appropriating money for this noble cause. Second, it would probably help to reduce the bias in R&D funding, directing money to areas, such as improved vector control, that are recognized as more important for African countries. Third, it would help in creating a much-needed culture of accountability and responsiveness in African politics," according to Tren (7/22).
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20110725/African-leaders-must-

MALARIA: Attracting mosquitoes by smell

28 Jul, 2010
With around half the world’s population at risk of malaria, researchers have put a lot of effort into finding ways to prevent infection. Interventions commonly focus on preventing bites from the mosquitoes that transmit the malaria parasite using, for example, insecticide-treated bednets.
However, researchers at the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania are working on a more unusual method – traps that mimic the scent of humans.
Mosquitoes find their prey mostly by smell, and are attracted to compounds found in sweat, body odour and breath. A hunting mosquito can smell a human from about 30 metres away.
The research team created a synthetic blend of compounds such as carbon dioxide and ammonia that have been shown to draw mosquitoes to humans. They optimised the amount of each compound to make the blend as attractive as possible to mosquitoes over long ranges.
Some synthetic lures already exist, but this is the first time that they have been tested outside of a laboratory setting. The researchers tested their lure in a rural village, attaching it to a large screened cage. They then put this in a hut and compared the number of mosquitoes they trapped with those caught in traps in a nearby hut containing no lure but human volunteers (note, no humans were intentionally put in harm’s way for this experiment!).
The researchers found that the lure attracted 3-5 times more mosquitoes than the human volunteers when placed in a separate hut over 10 metres away. It was equally or less attractive when contained within the same hut, suggesting that the lure would be most effective for long-range use.
The potential benefits of these lures are impressive. In their latest paper, the researchers’ suggests that such traps should be used strategically in places where mosquitoes are prolific, such as near larval breeding sites, in addition to insecticide-treated bednets and other existing methods.
They conclude that 20-130 traps used in a group of 1000 people would reduce malaria transmission by 99 per cent or more in most areas. If developers can optimise the lures further and make the traps as cheaply as possible, this could make a real impact on the fight against malaria in the developing world.
http://wellcometrust.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/attracting-mosquitoes-by-smell/

MALARIA: "Zooprophylaxis." The diversion of disease carrying insect from humans to animals

The diversion of disease carrying insect from humans to animals may reduce transmission of diseases such as malaria. The use of animals to mitigate mosquito bites on human is called ‘zooprophylaxis’. We introduce a mathematical model for Plasmodium vivax malaria transmission with two bloodmeal hosts (humans and domestic animals) to study the effect of zooprophylaxis. After computing the basic reproduction number from the proposed model, we explore how perturbations in the parameters, sensitive to the effects of control measures, affect its value. Zooprophylaxis is shown to determine whether a basic reproduction becomes bigger than an outbreak threshold value or not. Sensitivity analysis shows that increasing the relative animal population size works better in P. vivax malaria control than decreasing the mosquito population when the relative animal population size is larger than a threshold value.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WMD-50GJ2VN-1&_user=10&_coverDate=07%2F07%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6a1ec2cd7cbe37dfd944f22e998dcbbe

MALARIA: Duke Global Health Institute to conduct IR for malaria control

20 Jul 2010
The Duke Global Health Institute, USA, has received a $2.2-million, 4-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support research by a Duke University-led team to promote sustainable strategies to curb the spread of malaria and protect human and environmental health in endemic areas.
According to principal investigator Randall A. Kramer, professor of environmental economics at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment at the DGHI, the team will conduct experiments in 24 villages in the Mvomero district of Tanzania to assess the effectiveness of different intervention strategies individually and in combination.
Using the findings from these studies, the Duke team will refine a new tool used to improve the effectiveness and safety of malaria control strategies in different settings worldwide. Designed by Duke researchers in 2007, the Malaria Decision Analysis Support Tool (MDAST) was developed to address the controversial re-introduction of DDT in several East African countries by assessing the economic, environmental and human health risks with alternative strategies for managing malaria (1).
In the Tanzania studies, villages will be randomly assigned to receive one of four disease-control strategies: no intervention; treatment with mosquito-larvicides; rapid diagnostic testing for malaria by health workers; or both larviciding and rapid diagnostic testing.
“The central objective is to improve malaria control through an implementation science approach that integrates health delivery and decision support modelling to promote joint optimization of vector control and disease management strategies,” says Kramer.
Marie Lynn Miranda, associate professor of environmental sciences and policy and director of the Children’s Environmental Health initiative at the Nicholas School, is Kramer’s co-principal investigator on the new grant. Their team includes collaborators from Duke University, the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and the National Institute for Medical Research in Tanzania.
References1. Beerbohm, E. A pilot expert elicitation to assess the risks of malaria vector control strategies in East Africa. Unpublished.
http://blog.tropika.net/tropika/2010/07/20/duke-to-conduct-ir-for-malaria-control/

MALARIA: NIH Funds 10 International Centers of Excellence for Malaria Research

In an effort to accelerate the control of malaria and help eliminate it worldwide, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, today announced approximately $14 million in first-year funding to establish 10 new malaria research centers around the world.
The seven-year awards will establish the International Centers of Excellence for Malaria Research (ICEMRs) in regions where malaria is endemic, including parts of Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands and Latin America. These regions include some of the focus countries of the President’s Malaria Initiative, an effort that since 2005 has worked to fight malaria in the regions most affected by the disease. Infection by malaria-causing parasites results in approximately 240 million cases around the globe annually, and cause more than 850,000 deaths each year. Teams of scientists involved in the ICEMR program will be conducting research in more than 20 countries.
“One of our primary goals with these centers is to fund cutting-edge research in malaria-endemic areas that will keep up with the rapidly changing epidemiology of the disease,” says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.
Malaria has been eliminated from many parts of the globe, but 40 percent of the world’s population still live in areas where they are at risk for contracting the disease. According to Lee Hall, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the Parasitology and International Programs Branch in NIAID, sustainable and effective malaria control requires research in multiple settings on the complex interactions among the parasite, the mosquito vector, the local ecology and the human host.
“The ICEMR program seeks to address this need by creating a network of multidisciplinary research centers in malaria-endemic settings,” Dr. Hall says. “The centers aim to generate critical knowledge, tools and evidence-based strategies to support intervention and control programs by government organizations and health care institutions.”
The centers will integrate clinical and field approaches with laboratory-based immunologic, molecular and genomic methods. They will adapt their research to changes in malaria epidemiology and emerging research needs as well as opportunities within the specific regions. Their findings are expected to help inform how new interventions and control strategies are designed and evaluated in the future.
Each center will
Design and conduct multidisciplinary research on the epidemiology, transmission and pathogenesis of malaria in endemic geographic regions
Design and conduct special projects to capitalize on new opportunities and emerging public health needs
Develop and conduct training and career development programs for researchers from malaria-endemic areas
Overall, these centers are expected to bring critical infrastructure to these endemic regions and help build training and research capacity to combat malaria worldwide.
The principal investigators selected to establish the ICEMRs are as follows:
Malaria Transmission and the Impact of Control Efforts in Southern AfricaPrincipal Investigator: Peter Agre, M.D.Lead Institution: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
Center for the Study of Complex Malaria in IndiaPrincipal Investigator: Jane Carlton, Ph. D.Lead Institution: New York University School of Medicine, New York City
Southeast Asia Malaria Research CenterPrincipal Investigator: Liwang Cui, Ph.D.Lead Institution: Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Program for Resistance, Immunology, Surveillance & Modeling of Malaria in UgandaPrincipal Investigator: Matthew Dorsey, M.D.Lead Institution: University of California, San Francisco
Latin American Center for Malaria Research and ControlPrincipal Investigator: Socrates Herrera-Valencia, M.D.Lead Institution: Caucaseo Scientific Research Center, Cali, Colombia
Research to Control and Eliminate Malaria in SE Asia and SW PacificPrincipal Investigator: James Kazura, M.D.Lead Institution: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland
Population-based Approach to Malaria Research and Control in West AfricaPrincipal Investigator: Donald Krogstad, M.D.Lead Institution: Tulane University, New Orleans
Malaria Evolution in South AsiaPrincipal Investigator: Pradipsinh Rathod, Ph. D. Lead Institution: University of Washington, Seattle
Determinants of Malaria Disease in MalawiPrincipal Investigator: Terrie Taylor, D.O.Lead Institution: Michigan State University, East Lansing
Peruvian/Brazilian Amazon Center of Excellence in MalariaPrincipal Investigator: Joseph Vinetz, M.D.Lead Institution: University of California, San Diego
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2010/Pages/malariaICEMR.aspx