Penn State College of Medicine announced Wednesday (July 13) that it will receive additional funding through Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that enables researchers worldwide to test unorthodox ideas that address persistent health and development challenges. Jose A. Stoute, associate professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology, will continue to pursue an innovative global health research project titled "Use of Microwave Frequency as Treatment for Malaria." (more)
In the war between drugs and drug-resistant diseases, is the current strategy for medicating patients giving many drug-resistant diseases a big competitive advantage? A research paper that will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues for new research efforts to discover effective ways for managing the evolution and slowing the spread of drug-resistant disease organisms. The research is led by Andrew Read, professor of biology and entomology and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State University.
The ultimate goal is to develop a new science-based model for drug-resistance management that will inform treatment guidelines for a wide variety of diseases that affect people, including malaria and other diseases caused by parasites, MRSA and other diseases caused by bacterial infections, AIDS and other diseases caused by viruses, and cancer. (more)
A researcher in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences will lead a seven-year, $14.5-million project to fight malaria in Southeast Asia. Liwang Cui, professor of entomology, is the principal investigator for the Southeast Asia Malaria Research Center, one of 10 International Centers of Excellence for Malaria Research announced July 8 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. (more)
Discovery of a key red cell molecule used by the malaria parasite gives renewed hope for an effective vaccine in the future, according to an international team of researchers. Plasmodium falciparum, a blood parasite that causes malaria by invading and multiplying in the red blood cells, kills 1 to 2 million people annually. (more)
Penn State received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will support an innovative global health research project conducted by Consuelo De Moraes, associate professor of entomology, titled "Scent of Disease: Diagnostic for Malaria Infection in Humans." (more)
A nearly $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation is enabling a Penn State-led group of researchers to continue studies on the potential effects of climate change on the spread of infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue. The grant is part of federal stimulus funding authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (more)
Daytime temperature fluctuations greatly alter the incubation period of malaria parasites in mosquitoes and alter transmission rates of the disease. Consideration of these fluctuations reveals a more accurate picture of climate change's impact on malaria. Most studies use average monthly temperatures to study the impact of climate change on the global malaria burden," said Matthew Thomas, professor of entomology, Penn State. "But mosquitoes and the malaria parasites developing within them do not experience average temperatures; they are exposed to temperatures that fluctuate throughout the day." (more)
Killing just the older mosquitoes would be a more sustainable way of controlling malaria, according to entomologists who add that the approach may lead to evolution-proof insecticides that never become obsolete. Each year malaria -- spread through mosquito bites -- kills about a million people, but many of the chemicals used to kill the insects become ineffective. Repeated exposure to an insecticide breeds a new generation of mosquitoes that are resistant to that particular insecticide. (more)
Temperature is an important factor in the spread of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases, but researchers who look at average monthly or annual temperatures are not seeing the whole picture. Global climate change will affect daily temperature variations, which can have a more pronounced effect on parasite development, according to a Penn State entomologist."We need higher resolution environmental and biological data to understand how climate change will affect the spread of the malaria parasite," says Matthew Thomas, professor of entomology. We need to understand temperature from the point of view of the mosquito." (more)
