Drug-Resistant Malaria May Pose Major Threat 71
According to Newsweek, "A strain of drug-resistant malaria that was discovered last summer along the Thailand-Cambodia border has been been spreading throughout Southeast Asia, to Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar." Specifically, the samples are resistant to anti-malarial artemisinin.
The study analyzed more than 900 blood samples from malaria patients at over 55 different sites in Myanmar. The results showed that the drug-resistant bug was widespread, and dangerously close to the Indian border in the country’s Sagaing region. "Our study shows that artemisinin resistance extends over more of southeast Asia than had previously been known, and is now present close to the border with India,” wrote the researchers in the study abstract.
the samples are resistant to anti-malarial artemi (Score:2, Insightful)
Are the mosquitoes DDT-resistant?
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I'm guessing malaria is now resistant to quinine, too, but I'm still game to try to tackle this problem with gin and tonic. We just need a large enough gin and tonic to cover Africa. If it doesn't fix the malaria, at least they probably won't care so much that they have malaria.
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IIRC quinine is still effective but because it can have worse side effects, it is a second line drug now if artemisinin fails.
But be careful, it does nothing against tigers.
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There is even new evidence that DDT was not the cause of the egg shell thickness problem. It could have been environmental acidification [usgs.gov]. Even with much lower use of DDT egg shell thickness is still down [wikipedia.org].
Some studies show that although DDE levels have fallen dramatically, eggshell thickness remains 10–12 percent thinner than before DDT was first used.
DDE is the metabolite of DDT that is thought to cause egg shell thinning.
It looks like this might be another correlation is not causation problem.
Re:the samples are resistant to anti-malarial arte (Score:4, Interesting)
An yet the raptors made a serious comeback after DDT use was cut back. Yesterday I went to the local dump and counted 30 eagles. It's important to have carrion eaters around to slow down disease spread and eagles are very good at eating carrion.
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Take a look [foxnews.com]
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists fed large doses of DDT to captive bald eagles for 112 days and concluded that “DDT residues encountered by eagles in the environment would not adversely affect eagles or their eggs,” according to a 1966 report published in the “Transcripts of 31st North America Wildlife Conference.”
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I wish so fucking I could mod you up right now. I even logged in to see if I had mod points!
Re:the samples are resistant to anti-malarial arte (Score:5, Interesting)
"In malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, for example, depletes its host of Vitamin A, possibly resulting in blindness in some cases. However, 200,000 International Units of Vitamin A, given to children every three months can reduce significantly their susceptibility to malaria. This would seem to be a minimum child dosage for the treatment of the disease."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... [nih.gov]
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The device can be build in a day at any University.Please study this and share the word about this Malaria Treatment using Oscillating Magnetic Fields which can be built by Collage or University students.Six million people are dying each year from Malaria.People just like you.Children,men women, mothers and fathers dying in great pain and suffering from malaria right now.Remember just because it's not shown on the tv does not mean it's not happening. www.washington.edu/news/2000/03/30/magnetic-fields-may-ho
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in all probability or else they'd be using DDT, which is legal for malaria control.
DDT is a good example of a failure of capitalism. A wonder chemical that was pushed as a money maker as hard as the chemical company could and while it succeeded in bringing malaria under control in temperate climates, in tropical climates mosquitoes evolved resistance.
We're seeing the same thing now with anti-biotics. Drug companies have pushed the use so much that even live stock uses tons and it is routinely used for usele
Re: the samples are resistant to anti-malarial art (Score:2, Insightful)
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If there's one thing a farmer wants to do it is waste money on useless shots.
You're making no sense at all. Farmers give antibiotics because they're proven to bulk up their animals. Meanwhile, we're the ones that get the incurable diseases. Fortunately, antibiotics make e coli O157 produce more shigatoxin so it doesn't really matter how resistant it gets [nih.gov].
Re: the samples are resistant to anti-malarial art (Score:4)
Just because something is short term beneficial does not mean it is long term beneficial. There's also the problem that some moves benefit a small group while harming a large group. Fatten up the animals, good for the farmer. Encourage the evolution of anti-biotic resistant e. coli, bad for society.
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DDT doesn't just kill mosquitoes, but lots of other more useful insects (pollinators) and even some larger animals as well. Not exactly good for the ecosystem. It accumulates in fat tissue and works itself up through the food chain, even making it into penguins on Antarctica.
It could be useful when applied locally, for example inside homes, but afaik spraying large areas of land is no longer considered a good idea. And then of course there's the pesky little problem of resistance to DDT which has been shown
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Yes, the relevant genes aren't going be expressed much ... but nothing a little selective pressure couldn't fix in a hurry.
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You do realize that Malaria is a protozoan, not a bacteria, and definitely not a virus. Vaccines are only for viruses - to prime your immune system to react and eradicate the virus when it encounters it, not to treat the infection. Not for bacteria and definitely not for protozoan. Antibiotics are for the *treatment* of bacterial infections and are not a preventative (cleanliness is the preventative). Protozoan, like Malaria, treatments are basically toxins/poisons that are poisonous to the protozoan more t
Re:Man in the middle (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that you are completely wrong?
Vaccines are not only for viruses - the very common vaccine Di-Per-Te is a nice sample - it is for three different bacterias.
Protozoal vaccines are also in use eg. Nobivac Piro.
Vaccines can be made for every infective agent that represents antibodies - or it's antibodies are represented on cells that are infected by this agent.
In one aspect you are right: currently there is no vaccine for Malaria.
One of these days Mother Nature is going to decide (Score:2, Insightful)
that there are just too many people. The Earth is a self-correcting system.
Re:One of these days Mother Nature is going to dec (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, major pandemics have been documented throughout the last 2000 years. Air travel today, just means they happen much faster.
The average person thinks modern medicine and hospitals can "take care of everything" but plans can't be made when a pandemic strikes 20 or 25% of the population who all want to go to the hospital in the same time period.
The WWI-1918 "Spanish Flu" was perhaps the last major pandemic, infecting 1 out of 3 people in the world and killing 10% of the world's population in about 18 months.
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3% to 5% of the world's population. It killed fewer than 100 million people, possibly as low as 50 million....
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Agree with your 3-5% mortality. I find it astonishing that 1 in 3 people were estimated to have contracted the flu. Virtually all people were exposed, so that means they must have had prior antibodies.
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Just wait til Bill Gates begins twiddling with these mosquitoes at the genetic level - as threatened. What could possibly go wrong, for the Sorcerer's Apprentice?
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Genetic alarmism is so fucking tiring. Do you think that if someone does genemod mosquitoes to reduce malarial load on humans, that they won't be tested? "gene mod goes wrong, everything ruined" is a movie plot. The reality is very likely to be less human suffering.
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Do you think that if someone does genemod mosquitoes to reduce malarial load on humans, that they won't be tested?
I think they'll be just as well-tested as GMO crops, which means one or two generations, slap them on the ass, and send them out the door.
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We could get along without square tomatoes, but THIS is the reason we need GMO.
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We need a worldwide effort from every single nation to capture specimens of every mosquito species. Once this is done, all mosquito species should have their genes resequenced so that all males are made sterile, thus destroying this creature in every habitat, worldwide. This entire species has no redeeming value whatsoever, and should be completely eradicated.
Great, wipe out another pollinator and then wonder why the environment is deteriorating. You do realize that male mosquitoes often live on pollen and are a pollinator, as well as many types of mosquito don't bother people.
As stupid as indiscriminately using DDT for everything until resistance was bred instead of treating it more like the nuclear option. We're currently doing the same now with anti-biotics.
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You do realize that male mosquitoes often live on pollen and are a pollinator
So, only kill the females.
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Best to limit it to only the most threatening ones, eg carriers of malaria, yellow fever etc. The over parents idea is like wiping out all bees because of Africanized killer bees.
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Well, they do seem to be an important food source for lots of insect eating animals. Birds, bats,...
Overuse of artemisinin? (Score:3, Insightful)
I recall reading that the reason for the drug resistance was the over-use of sub-therapeutic levels of artemisinin in the area.
And for that reason, the resistance is limited to those regions where they use sub-therapeutic levels.
Right?
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I do seem to remember an article saying that drug resistance decreased when the organisms were no longer frequently exposed to the drug. Resistance is a huge genetic advantage when the drug is regularly applied (as with antibiotics in hospitals), but actually a small disadvantage when the drug is no longer applied because it makes the rest of the organism less efficient. In an environment without the drug, the non-resistant bacteria apparently outperformed the resistant bacteria so that resistance faded awa
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The origin of the strain would be, but as long as there is a resivior for it, or it is actively spread between humans then it can go anywhere.
Re:Overuse of artemisinin? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the article I was thinking about. From the conclusion:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1... [nejm.org]
Artemisinin Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum Malaria
Arjen M. Dondorp, M.D., François Nosten, M.D., Poravuth Yi, M.D., et al.
N Engl J Med 2009; 361:455-467
July 30, 2009
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa0808859
[Free]
Chloroquine and sulfadoxine–pyrimethamine resistance in P. falciparum emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s on the Thai–Cambodian border and spread across Asia and then Africa, contributing to millions of deaths from malaria.28,29 Artemisinins have been available as monotherapies in western Cambodia for more than 30 years, in a variety of forms and doses, whereas in most countries (other than China, where they were discovered), they have been a relatively recent introduction.1 Despite the early implementation of an active malaria-control program by the Ministry of Health of Cambodia, including the introduction of artemisinin-based combination therapies in 2001, a recent survey showed that 78% of artemisinin use in western Cambodia consisted of monotherapy provided through the private sector.30 The extended period of often-suboptimal use, and the genetic background of parasites from this region,31 might have contributed to the emergence and subsequent spread of these new artemisinin-resistant parasites in western Cambodia. In contrast, artemisinin derivatives have been used almost exclusively in combination with mefloquine on the Thai–Burmese border, where parasitologic responses to artemisinins remain good, even after 15 years of intensive use.27 Measures for containment are now urgently needed to limit the spread of these parasites from western Cambodia and to prevent a major threat to current plans for eliminating malaria.
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> But because it is cheap, drug companies don't like it.
Because drug companies never convolute simple compounds and make it exorbitantly expensive to access (eg Brand Coumadin vs Generic Sodium Warafin).
If MMS (hey look, someone tried to brand it already!) actually cured malaria, drug companies would sell it. It's not like maladria is going to be eradicated (if it was, they would raise the price!).
Re:Use MMS to cure Malaria - Simple Cheap (Score:4)
Or because or does not work [wikipedia.org] and is toxic.
Just watch the video. It has all the hallmarks of a scam. If it works do a real trial instead of posting unverified videos.
I thought Bill Gates cured Malaria... (Score:2)
Wasn't that the plan? I guess that commitment went out the window with charging retail prices for the new Windows OS...
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He only cured version 1.0. You have to buy the upgrade to cure 2.0.
Gin & Tonic (Score:3, Funny)
Is it resistant to gin & tonic?
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You jest... but the invention of "quinine water" (tonic) mixed with gin was to mask the bitter flavor of quinine so that people could take their daily dose and prevent malaria in tropical areas.
Unfortunately, like for all other drugs, malaria has developed resistance to quinine so it is less effective today (but still a good mixer for gin).
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