New U.S. Army Mosquito Control Technology Licensed For Deployment Against Dengue
A novel, patented mosquito-killing technology developed by U.S. Army researchers under a long-term, joint-development agreement between the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research , the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, and the U.S.

Critical Gap In Global Health Covered By Primate Disease Field Guide
Why are so many infectious diseases jumping from animals to humans? Why do we have so little capacity to predict epidemics, or avoid them? Some answers, and possible solutions, can be found in the first trench-to-bench guide to wild primate infectious diseases, published Nov. 17 in the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. "There is growing awareness that the majority of emerging pathogens in the world are coming from wildlife.

New Technologies Gearing Up To Meet Rising Demand For Vital Malaria Drugs
Three emerging technologies have the potential to significantly improve supplies of drugs to combat malaria, according to a report just published. With renewed efforts to eradicate malaria - a disease which kills up to one million people every year, most of them young children - the global demand for antimalarials is set to increase dramatically over the next four years.

Drug Forecasting Method For Anti-Malarial Treatments To Be Presented At The A...
Treating infectious diseases while meeting escalating costs to do so continues to pose worldwide challenges, with one of the main issues being the ability to provide an adequate supply of drugs to treat infectious diseases. While this may sound simple, ensuring a sufficient supply of effective drugs to each country that needs them remains a challenge until the demand for those drugs is accurately predicted and understood.

90 Million African Children Still Exposed To Malaria, Despite Net Usage Increase
The use of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) to protect children from malaria has risen six-fold in the past seven years, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust. Despite this success, however, 90 million children still do not have access to this simple protective tool, and remain at risk from the life-threatening disease. Malaria kills nearly a million people in Africa every year.

WHO And Health Partners Lead Massive Cholera Response In Eastern DRC
The World Health Organization (WHO) and health partners have launched an intensive operation to prevent and control the increase in the number of cholera cases, which have tripled in some areas to 150 a week, amid the recent escalation of violence in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

World Leaders In Infectious Diseases To Convene And Discuss Developments In R...
Nearly 2,900 physicians and scientists from institutions around the world such as the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health will meet at the 57th American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene's Annual Meeting Dec. 7-11, in New Orleans to discuss the latest research on infectious and emerging diseases and global health threats. Meeting highlights include: "Airport Malaria" - Cause for Concern in the U.S.

The Evolution Of Water Balance In Glossina (Diptera: Glossinidae): Correlatio...
The water balance of tsetse flies (Diptera: Glossinidae) has significant implications for understanding biogeography and climate change responses in these African disease vectors. Although moisture is important for tsetse population dynamics, evolutionary responses of Glossina water balance to climate have been relatively poorly explored and earlier studies may have been confounded by several factors.

IMM, Cenix, And Alnylam Discover New Targets In Malaria Infection With RNAi T...
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, and Cenix BioScience GmbH, a leading RNAi-focused contract research organization, today announced the publication of a new study in the journal PLoS Pathogens demonstrating in vitro and in vivo RNAi-mediated silencing of novel host factors involved in malaria infection. The work resulted from an ongoing malaria research program started as a collaboration announced in 2005 between the group of Dr.

Potential Pharmaceutical Royalties To Be Donated To Madagascar
The National Institutes of Health has renewed a five-year research grant for a total of $2.5 million to an international biodiversity group lead by David G.I. Kingston, University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Tech. Kingston is known internationally for his work in biodiversity and development of naturally occurring cancer-fighting agents.

Global Fund Grants Nearly $3B For HIV/AIDS Efforts
The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Monday announced it has approved nearly $3 billion in Round 8 funding to improve access to HIV treatment and prevention and help reduce deaths from TB and malaria by 50% by 2015, AFP/Yahoo! News reports (AFP/Yahoo! News, 11/10).

'Airport Malaria' A Cause For Concern In The US
In a global world, significant factors affect the spread of infectious diseases, including international trade, air travel and globalized food production. "Airport malaria" is a term coined by researchers to explain the more recent spread of malaria to areas such as the United States and Europe, which some scientists credit to warmer climate changes.

Zimbabwe Returns $7.3M In Misused Grant Money To Global Fund
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has returned $7.3 million in misused grant money to the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Global Fund Executive Director Michel Kazatchkine said Friday, Reuters reports (Williams, Reuters [1], 11/7).The money, which was part of last year's $12.

Malawi Receives $20M Grant To Bolster HIV Treatment, Testing Efforts
A senior government official on Wednesday announced that Malawi has received a $20 million grant from the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to expand its HIV/AIDS treatment and testing program, AFP/Yahoo! News reports.

Researchers Find Relationship Between Brain Fluid And Adult Seizures
According to a new study published early online and in the December issue of Lancet Neurology, researchers better understand the disease mechanisms behind brain seizures that are due to the tapeworm-derived parasitic infection called neurocysticercosis. Their finding that the seizures are frequently associated with fluid or perlesional oedema (PO) around dead calcified cysticercal granulomas (immune cells) may lead to better possible treatment targets.

Spatial And Temporal Clustering Of Dengue Virus Transmission In Thai Villages
In a new study reported in PLoS Medicine, Mammen P. Mammen Jr. of the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS) in Bangkok and colleagues investigated the spread of dengue virus infection in rural Thai villages. Identifying cases by screening schoolchildren with fever, the researchers then found that infection spread from the homes of infected children to nearby houses, resulting in localized clustering of cases.

News From BioScience, November 2008
The complete list of research articles in the November 2008 issue of BioScience is as follows: Identifying and Characterizing Bacteria in an Era of Genomics and Proteomics David Emerson, Liane Agulto, Henry Liu, and Liping Liu. New molecular technologies in genomics and proteomics are changing techniques used for identifying bacteria.

Describing West Nile's North American Spread
The rapid spread of West Nile virus in North America over the past decade is likely to have long-lasting ecological consequences throughout the continent, according to an article in the November issue of BioScience. The mosquito-borne virus, which was little known before its emergence in New York in 1999, has since been found in all 48 contiguous states.

Novel Antibiotic Class Also Active Against Malaria Parasite
A new class of antimicrobial agent with broad-spectrum activity has been found to kill Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the most lethal form of human malaria. University of Pennsylvania pharmacologist Doron Greenbaum, Ph.D., presented these results, from in vitro experiments, at the 48th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), held in Washington, D.C. from October 25-28. Dr.

Global Fund Says Zimbabwe Misused Grant, Requests Return Of Money
The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has said that Zimbabwe misused $7.3 million of last year's $12.3 million grant, and Global Fund officials have asked Zimbabwe to return the money, the New York Times reports (Dugger, New York Times, 11/3).