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Malaria

Description
Malaria is a life-threatening parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitos. The malaria parasite enters the human host when an infected Anopheles mosquito takes a blood meal. Inside the human host, the parasite undergoes a series of changes as part of its complex life-cycle. Its various stages allow plasmodia to evade the immune system, infect the liver and red blood cells, and finally develop into a form that is able to infect a mosquito again when it bites an infected person. Typically, malaria produces fever, headache, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms. The situation has become even more complex over the last few years with the increase in resistance to the drugs normally used to combat the parasite that causes the disease.

Who is at Risk?
Approximately 40% of the world's population, mostly those living in the world's poorest countries, is at risk of malaria. Ninety percent of deaths due to malaria occur in Africa south of the Sahara, mostly among young children. The risk of getting malaria depends on your age, history of exposure to malaria, and pregnancy status. Most adults who have lived in areas where malaria is present have developed partial immunity to malaria because of previous infections and therefore almost never develop severe disease. Pregnant women are more likely to get severe malaria than nonpregnant women because the immune system is suppressed during pregnancy.

Sources: World Health Organization, Healthwise, Incorporated, University of Leicester

Scientists Report Global Survey Maps Function of Thousands of Malaria Genes
A team of researchers led by TSRI Assistant Professor Elizabeth Winzeler, Ph.D. have described a comprehensive global expression profile of genes in the malaria parasite. This profile is a valuable tool that associates the function of the few known malaria genes with the thousands that have no known function. This should improve the prospects for designing new ways to fight the deadly disease by dramatically accelerating the process of drug and vaccine development. Vaccine and drug development relies on identifying molecules that may be vulnerable to attack by the immune system or by man-made drugs, and this research helps to establish which of Plasmodium falciparum"s unknown genes may be potential targets.

One of the greatest challenges to global public health today is the control of malaria. In many parts of the world, malaria is a major cause of death and disability. More than 1 million people die of malaria each year. Most of these victims are children under the age of five. Drug-resistant strains of the parasite that causes malaria have evolved over the last few decades, making malaria more deadly and expensive to treat. There is a profound need for more drugs to treat the disease and effective vaccines to prevent it.

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Scientists Identify Thousands of Proteins Associated with the Deadliest Form of Malaria
Scientists at TSRI have lead a collaborative effort involving 18 researchers at half a dozen laboratories in the United States and Great Britain to determine the "proteome" of the most deadly form of the malaria pathogen - Plasmodium falciparum. TSRI Professor John Yates, Ph.D. was the lead scientist involved in the proteomics effort, which identified the proteins in the single-celled Plasmodium that cause malaria. These efforts will pay huge dividends in global healthcare if even a few of the newly identified proteins lead to the development of new malaria vaccines - and Yates and his colleagues found a total of more than 2,400 proteins.

Knowing which proteins are expressed by Plasmodium falciparum should help scientists understand how the pathogen causes malaria and, with luck, how to thwart it. Yates and his colleagues sought to identify which proteins are expressed at which stages of the organism"s lifecycle and, thus, which might make good vaccine targets. They were able to show not only which genes were expressed in each stage of the Plasmodium falciparum life cycle, but which proteins were membrane-associated, and which were inside the cell - important pieces of information for vaccine design.

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