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A new technique that accurately determines the risk of infants inendemic countries developing clinical malaria could provide a valuable tool for evaluating new malariaprevention strategies and vaccines. The technique could even help to understand how anti-malarialvaccine and treatment strategies act to reduce malaria, sayresearchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, SwissTropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basel and thePapua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research. Professor Ivo Mueller from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute'sInfection and Immunity division said the research team discoveredthat the number of new malaria parasites that infants acquire overtime is strongly linked to the risk that the child will developclinical disease. "It was very clear that infection with new and geneticallydifferent malaria parasites was the single biggest factor indetermining the risk of an infant becoming sick from malaria, morethan any other factor including age, the use of bed nets or therisk of transmission in the area. We were actually surprised by howclear the correlation was," Professor Mueller said. The molecular technique to genetically differentiate Plasmodiumfalciparum parasites was developed by Dr Ingrid Felger at theDepartment of Medical Parasitology and Infection Biology, SwissTropical and Public Health Institute, Switzerland. Professor TerrySpeed from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's Bioinformaticsdivision helped to develop mathematical algorithms to process thedata. Dr Felger said the researchers used high-throughput screening todetermine the number of genetically-distinct Plasmodium falciparummalaria parasites that acquired by Papua New Guinean children agedone to four over a period of 16 months. The research was publishedtoday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences of the United States of America. "This new research tool is elegantly simple but very powerful, andeasily applicable in many circumstances, without a high level oftechnology or training," Dr Felger said. "We think it could haveprofound applications. This technology will be particularly usefulfor assessing ideal vaccine candidates for preventing malaria, helpto develop better ways of performing future human trials of newpotential malaria vaccines, and identifying the mechanism of actionfor existing vaccines and treatments." Each year more than 250 million people worldwide contract malaria,and up to one million people die. Malaria is particularly dangerousfor children under five and pregnant women. Plasmodium falciparumis the most lethal of the four Plasmodium species, and isresponsible for most clinical disease. Professor Mueller said the technology is already being used in thefield, recently helping to explain why people with sickle-cellanaemia are less at risk of malaria infection. He said thataccurately assessing the burden of malaria parasites acquired bychildren in countries where the disease is endemic is invaluable. "One of our biggest problems in developing useful vaccines,treatments and preventative strategies for malaria is reliablypredicting the distribution and risk of malaria at an individuallevel. There is huge variation in the risk of developing clinicalmalaria within a community or village, or within a particular agegroup, and we now have an accurate way to measure this," ProfessorMueller said. Additional References Citations. I am an expert from portable-data-terminals.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Symbol Pocket PC Scanner Manufacturer , Product Catalogue Manufacturer, GSM Wireless Terminal,and more.
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