Malaria News and Research

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Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite called Plasmodium - when infected mosquitoes bite the human body, the parasites multiply in the liver, and then infect red blood cells. Even though this potentially fatal disease can be prevented and cured, each year 350-500 million cases of malaria still occur worldwide, and over one million people die, most of them young children in Africa south of the Sahara, where one in every five (20%) childhood deaths is due to the effects of the disease.

Malaria is so common in Africa because a lack of resources and political instability have prevented the building of solid malaria control programs. Experts say an African child has on average between 1.6 and 5.4 episodes of malaria fever each year and according to the World Health Organization (WHO) as many as half of the world's population are at risk of malaria mainly in the world's poorest and most vulnerable countries and every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria.

New Microscope Combined with AI Software to Identify Malaria Parasites in Blood Samples

Each year, more than 200 million people fall sick with malaria and more than half a million of these infections lead to death.

11 Aug 2023

Malaria Parasite’s Meiosis Could Hold the Key to New Treatments

Researchers from the Universities of Leicester and Nottingham have been awarded nearly £600,000 to investigate how sexual development and gene shuffling inside the malaria parasite can help regulate malaria transmission.

7 Aug 2023

EMBL-EBI Launches Pathogens Portal to Enhance Global Pathogen Surveillance

EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) has launched the Pathogens Portal – an online platform that enables researchers, clinicians, and policymakers to access the most comprehensive collection of biomolecular data about pathogens.

7 Jul 2023

Researchers Develop New Way to Genetically Suppress Malaria-Carrying Mosquitoes

Malaria remains one of the world's deadliest diseases. Each year malaria infections result in hundreds of thousands of deaths, with the majority of fatalities occurring in children under five.

6 Jul 2023

Understanding How Malaria Parasite Modulates Apicoplast Gene Expression

A recent study supported by Tokyo Tech’s World Research Hub Initiative discovered that gene expression within the apicoplast, an organelle in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, is controlled by melatonin (the circadian signaling hormone) in host blood and intrinsic parasite cues via a factor called ApSigma.

5 Jul 2023

A New Class of Molecular Sensor Prevents Parasite Replication and Transmission

Malaria continues to be a serious public health issue, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, with almost 250 million cases per year and 621,000 fatalities.

19 Jun 2023

Molecular Rhythms of Malaria Parasites Sync With the Biological Clock of Human Hosts

Health officials warn that drug resistance could wipe out recent progress against malaria, particularly in Africa and southeast Asia.

7 Jun 2023

Temperature Preference of Mosquitos Identified

Mosquitoes have thermal inclinations. This is a significant parameter to better forecast outbreaks of diseases that have been transmitted by such insects.

29 May 2023

Large Testing Arena Helps Study How Mosquitoes Find Us Over Long Distances

We know a lot about mosquito preferences up close, but how do mosquitoes find us from up to a hundred meters away? Using an ice-rink-sized outdoor testing arena in Zambia, researchers found that human body odor is critical for mosquito host-seeking behavior over long distances.

22 May 2023

Researchers Show a Second Key Gene Involved in Malaria's Resistance to Chloroquine

How malaria parasites evolved to evade a major antimalarial drug has long been thought to involve only one key gene.

12 May 2023

Essential Oil From the Leaves of Labrador Tea Plant Has Antimalarial Properties

Much of what is now considered modern medicine originated as folk remedies or traditional, Indigenous practices. These customs are still alive today, and they could help address a variety of conditions.

12 May 2023

New Drug Development Method Could Lead to Cost-Effective Malaria Treatment

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) have developed a method to synthesize the highly potent antimalarial drug artemisinin, which could lead to a more cost-effective treatment for malaria.

3 May 2023

Study Provides Insight into the Formation of Protective Memory T Cells Against Salmonella

Salmonella infections cause about a million deaths a year worldwide, and there is an urgent need for better vaccines for both typhoid fever and non-typhoidal Salmonella disease.

18 Apr 2023

Dengue Viruses Subvert Mosquito Biology to Tamp Down Human Immune Responses

The saliva of mosquitoes infected with dengue viruses contains a substance that thwarts the human immune system and makes it easier for people to become infected with these potentially deadly viruses, new research reveals.

5 Apr 2023

Deactivating mosquito sperm to control populations of Culex

New UC Riverside research makes it likely that proteins responsible for activating mosquito sperm can be shut down, preventing them from swimming to or fertilizing eggs.

22 Mar 2023

Climate change likely to help mosquitoes reach colder parts of the continent

Based on data that span the past 120 years, scientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have found that the mosquitoes responsible for transmitting malaria in Africa are spreading deeper into southern Africa and to higher elevations than previously recorded. The researchers estimate that Anopheles mosquito populations in sub-Saharan Africa have gained an average of 6.5 meters (21 feet) of elevation per year, and the southern limits of their ranges moved south of the equator by 4.7 kilometers (nearly 3 miles) per year.

15 Feb 2023

New platform to study the feeding behavior of mosquitoes

If watching animals feast on human blood for 30-plus hours isn't your idea of fun, don't worry. The robot can do it.

10 Feb 2023

Effective new drugs to reduce the massive number of malaria cases

Malaria is known as a disastrous disease, with 247 million cases and 619,000 deaths reported in 2021 alone.

From The University of New South Wales (UNSW) 31 Jan 2023

Detecting the extent of natural selection over time

Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, the CNRS, and the Collège de France researchers have employed paleogenomics to trace 10,000 years of human immune system evolution. They examined the genomes of over 2,800 individuals who lived in Europe over the past 10 millennia.

From Institut Pasteur 18 Jan 2023

Molecular responses of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to hydroquinine

Researchers investigating the effects of an organic compound on drug-resistant bacteria found how it can impede and destroy a germ that causes significant illness or even death in some situations.

1 Nov 2022