Nye midler og medikamenter mod den frygtede lidelse, der især er udbredt i Afrika, kommer hele tiden på banen – og det er alt fra bagegær til gedemælk, svampesporer og planter, som de smittespredende myg holder sig langt væk fra.
NAIROBI, 26 April 2013 (IRIN): Malaria continues to be one of the world’s deadliest diseases, annually infecting more than 200 million people and killing more than 660.000, most of them African children, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO).
Prevention, including indoor spraying and insecticide-treated mosquito nets (imprægnerede med insektmiddel), and effective treatment with artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) has seen malaria mortality drop by more than 25 percent globally since 2000.
Scientists around the world are involved in research that aims to improve the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of malaria; IRIN has put together seven recent developments that have the potential to bring the disease closer to eradication.
Goat’s milk:
In 2012, researchers at the US’s Texas A&M University reported that they had genetically modified a goat to produce a malaria vaccine in its milk. The scientists hope to produce a drinkable version of the vaccine within a decade.
Baker’s yeast (gær)
Artemisinin combination therapy – whose main ingredient is made from the sweet wormwood tree, which is largely grown in China – is widely acknowledged as the most effective treatment for malaria.
But unpredictable weather affects crop yields, causing price fluctuations and an unstable supply of the drug.
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, recently announced that they had found a way to genetically engineer a strain (sort) of baker’s yeast to mass-produce a semi-synthetic version of the drug.
The intellectual property rights for this technology
These were funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and were provided free of charge in the hope that the research will lead to increased production of artemisinin treatment at a lower cost.
According to MIT Technology Review, French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi has started manufacturing the drug and is expected to produce 70 million doses in 2013.
Mosquito repellent plants (som holder myggene væk)
The NGO “Concern” has found that planting Lantana camara, a plant with pink, yellow and red flowers, in northwestern Tanzania’s Ngara District significantly reduced the number of malaria-carrying mosquitoes inside local houses.
In collaboration with the local Ifakara Health Institute, “Concern” planted Lantana camara around 231 homes in Ngara District, then counted the mosquitos indoors.
Their results showed “56 percent fewer Anopheles gambiae and 83 percent fewer Anopheles funestas, both malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and 50 percent fewer mosquitoes of any kind”.
The residents of these households reported lower malaria rates. “Concern” plans clinical trials to further investigate the impact of the plant and its potential as a tool in the fight against malaria.
Floating spores
In 2011, scientists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands developed a synthetic oil to disperse spores of the fungi (svampespore) M. anisopliae and B. bassiana, which cause mosquito larvae (larver) to die before reaching adulthood.
The easy-to-mix oil, when spread over open water, saw pupation (puppe) levels at the Kenyan test site drop to less than 20 percent.
Smell
Mosquitoes use nectar from flowers for energy, and scientists at Ohio State University are creating synthetic flower scents to lure (lokke) mosquitoes into traps. Health officials can then spray neighbourhoods based on whether they find disease-causing mosquitoes in the traps.
Læs videre på
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97924/Smart-science-in-the-fight-against-malaria
Begynd fra: “At the University of Washington, researchers are investigating the….”
