“Education, education, education.” Blair’s 1997 election catchphrase emphasises the importance of schooling in reducing inequality and poverty. As any gap year student who has spent a year constructing school walls in Uganda will attest, efforts to lift third-world countries out of poverty often centre on improving education. Continue reading
Limes on sale at a Vietnamese market
If you grab a beer in Mexico your camarero will wedge a lime in the top. The same simple action, with a dash of sunlight, can be used to treat contaminated water in developing countries. Researchers at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have found that adding lime juice to a solar disinfection method speeds up the removal of harmful bacteria, such as E. coli, significantly faster than by sunlight alone.
Researchers hunting for vaccines usually test their creations on animals before injecting humans. A favourite is the mouse, which has relatively similar physiology to human beings, grows quickly, and produces plenty of brethen. Continue reading
A recurring theme of the NTD sessions at this year’s ECCMID conference was the relationship between NTDs, HIV and STDs. Figures for each seem to overlap, as do some of the physical signs.
Each complements the other’s existence. For example, an NTD’s (such as schistosomiasis) symptoms make target areas (in this case epithelium) vulnerable and as a result ease the path of sexually transmitted disease (STDs) and HIV agents into the body. And with that, the person becomes coinfected by more than one dangerous illness.
The management of one, therefore, should take into account the others’. Here is a summary of what the ECCMID conference highlighted, particularly for schistosomiasis.
Dr Eyrun Kjetland from the School of Biological and Conservation Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa presented current research into urogenital schistosomiasis at this year’s ECCMID conference.
Taking a step back to begin with, she said schistosomiasis itself affects 2 billion people worldwide; 80 million of these show symptoms and just over 30 million receive treatment.
It’s a growing problem in some regions, particularly among travelers and migrants. People become infected with schistosomiasis when worm forms of the snail parasite penetrate their skin during contact with infested water. These then live in blood vessels where they grow and reproduce more schistosomes, or eggs. Eggs either pass through as waste or get trapped in the body, causing immune reactions and progressive damage to organs.
Kjetland described the current situation of one target of the schistosomes – the reproductive system. “In the last two decades,” she said, “after the first six community-based studies on this “gyneacological Schistosoma haematobium”, WHO has recommended that this form of the disease should be referred to as urogenital schistosomiasis.”
Below is a summary of key points and issues Kjetland raised during her presentation.
The European Congress on Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) is in London this weekend, running from Saturday until Tuesday. One in seven people are there, so follow our twitter feed for live updates on what’s going on.
ECCMID is vast – there are 10,000 attendees – and covers areas from insect bites to complex immunology. I managed to nab this year’s President, Professor Jonathan Cohen, to find out more about this year’s Congress and the largest public health event of the year, the London Olympics and Paralympics. We’d just listened to the 2011 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Professor Jules A. Hoffman, give a keynote address on phylogenetics. Continue reading
Last week we reported that the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) was many-fold – now an addition to the third D, diagnostics, literally lives up to that description. Chemists from the University of Texas at Austin have drawn inspiration from the art of origami to create a three-dimensional paper sensor that could test for diseases such as malaria and HIV for less than 10 pence.
The 3D oPAD sensor is less than 10p a pop
An outbreak of Human African Trypanosomiasis may be occurring for the first time in 12 years in the Masai Mara area of Kenya. An article in Eurosurveillance has documented that two travellers, one from Belgium and one from Germany, have returned home from the area infected with HAT. Continue reading
The fight against neglected tropical diseases is many-fold but whilst there is much talk about drug development and delivery, another integral component of treating NTDs is the third D: diagnostics. It’s all very well having the drugs in the right place at the right time but if you don’t know who needs treating then they are no good.
A new technology unveiled last week could bring faster and more accurate results for detecting diseases in developing countries and is only half a centimetre long.
Circuits: The readout system including the 5mm mini chips
When you think of the people and organisations that usually fund NTD research, the US Department of Defence (DOD) isn’t the first one that springs to mind. Since the first Gulf War in the 1990s, the DOD has been trickling a small (relative to some of their other projects) but still significant amount of funding into leishmaniasis research.Image credit MashleyMorgan on Flickr