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Morphine Free Poppies Could Help Fight Malaria (Afghanistan's New Cash Crop?)

Discussion in 'Health and Lifestyle' started by NATO AIR, Dec 10, 2004.

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Dec 10, 2004 #1

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pres. bush should jump right on this

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996667

Morphine-free poppies could help fight malaria

11:41 15 November 04

NewScientist.com news service

Gene silencing can stop the opium poppy producing morphine and instead force it to produce large amounts of a compound useful in the fight against malaria.

The poppy Papaver somniferum accumulates morphine, codeine and other opiates in its latex - its sap-like substance. The synthesis of these opiates in the plant involves a long and complex series of steps.

A team led by Philip Larkin from CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra, Australia, used RNA interference (RNAi) to silence - or turn off - the genes responsible for producing an enzyme called codeinone reductase. This in turn stopped the synthesis of the opiates at the stage at which a compound called reticuline is produced.

"Instead of morphine and the other opiates, large amounts of reticuline are accumulated in the latex," says Larkin.

Ethnobotanical studies of traditional herbal remedies for malaria from around the world have found that the active ingredient is very often an alkaloid comprised of two reticuline molecules. There is an urgent need for new anti-malarial drugs, and poppies modified by RNAi silencing or mutation could be an ideal source of reticuline, says Larkin.

Making heroin

All morphine and codeine used in medicine is extracted from the opium poppy, meaning there is a legitimate demand for the crop. But morphine is also needed to make the street drug heroin, so researchers around the world are working to identify and create versions of the poppy that do not produce morphine, but which would still be commercially valuable.

In September 2004, Larkin's team reported a naturally occurring mutant version of the poppy that does not produce morphine or codeine, but does produce other alkaloids that can be used to make potent painkillers. The report, published in Nature, was in collaboration with the company Tasmanian Alkaloids.

Much of the commercial opium poppy industry in Tasmania - which produces about 40% of the world's legal opiates - has now been turned over to growing this mutant, says Larkin.

Supply and demand

At the University of Calgary, Canada, a team led by Peter Facchini has also been working on interfering with the morphine pathway to reduce levels of this drug while increasing levels of other useful pharmaceuticals.

There are hopes that commercially valuable, non-morphine-producing opium poppies could supplant the black market crop produced by farmers in countries like Afghanistan, Myanmar and Colombia, which supply the heroin trade.

There is currently only a small market for reticuline, but the mutant poppy might provide an alternative, if Tasmanian Alkaloids was willing to distribute it freely, says Facchini. What Afghan and Colombian farmers need is real opportunity. That might stem the production of heroin.

But the availability of modified poppies alone will not end illegal farming. Both Larkin and Facchini say the demand also needs to be addressed. "While there's a market, there will be people prepared to supply it," Larkin says.

Journal reference: Nature Biotechnology (DOI: 10.1038/nbt1033)

Emma Young
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Dec 28, 2012 #2

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Lovastatin may help cerebral malaria patients...

Mice Study Indicates Cholesterol Drug Might Help Treat Serious Malaria Cases
December 27, 2012 - Each year, an estimated 500,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa develop the most serious form of malaria, so-called cerebral malaria. Experts say many of those who do not die from this parasitic infection go on, years later, to develop memory problems and learning difficulties. Now, researchers say these malaria-induced cognitive impairments may be averted with a commonly used cholesterol-lowering drug.

In a mouse model, an international research team has discovered that a cholesterol-lowering drug, called lovastatin, prevents the late cognitive problems seen in approximately 120,000 children throughout sub-Saharan Africa who survive cerebral malaria, which causes inflammation of brain and spinal tissue. In the study, researchers from the U.S. and Brazil treated a group of mice infected with the disease, using the standard anti-malarial drug, chloroquine. Half of the animals also received lovastatin, according to study leader Guy Zimmerman, a researcher at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City. The mice that got the anti-malarial drug and the lovastatin had a dramatically, significantly reduced incidence of the late brain dysfunction, Zimmerman said.

Lovastatin is part of a family of drugs that reduces the bodys inflammatory response to infection. Generated by the immune system, inflammation is a normal response to disease. But occasionally, the body mounts an aggressive inflammatory response that attacks the body's own tissue. Zimmerman says cognitive problems can mean a lifetime of challenges for children who've survived cerebral malaria. Trying to learn, if indeed they do have access to schools. Trying to do that while they are still mired in poverty while they are still at risk for AIDS. And if you begin to think about what that could do to their long-term intellectual capacity and their ability to function in their local societies, its staggering, Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman recommends lovastatin be added to treatments for malaria as well as for sepsis, a systemic blood infection commonly known as blood poisoning that sickens and threatens the lives of more people worldwide than cerebral malaria. Zimmerman has asked government drug regulators to speed their review process, but says hes not optimistic that the prerequisite human trials will be easy to conduct in far-flung regions of Africa, where malaria is prevalent. An article on the use of anti-cholesterol medicine in the treatment of malaria is published in the journal PLoS Pathogens.

Mice Study Indicates Cholesterol Drug Might Help Treat Serious Malaria Cases
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Jan 17, 2013 #3

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Biological Mechanism of Malaria Found...

Researchers Discover the Biological Mechanism of Malaria Infection
January 17, 2013 - Researchers say they have discovered how the malaria parasite gains a foothold inside the human body, causing the life-threatening illness. The finding could lead to a new treatment for malaria - using a drug thats already in clinical trials for use against another condition.

After taking a blood meal, experts say the malaria-infected female Anopheles mosquito injects about 1,000 parasites into the bloodstream. The microorganisms quickly reproduce after each one enters a red blood cell, according Doron Greenbaum, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania. Each parasite divides from one into say 24 to 32 parasites in 48 hours. So you can imagine that an initial thousand parasites can grow very fast, Greenbaum said.

Greenbaum says he and his colleagues discovered that inside the red blood cells, the parasites utilize a series of proteins to reproduce. After sapping the cells of their nutrient machinery, the new-born parasites burst through the cell walls and back into the blood stream, where they infect new blood cells, producing millions more offspring. After a one- to two-week incubation period, the parasitic infection causes the often fatal symptoms associated with malaria, including very high fevers, chills and sweats.

The discovery of this protein pathway inside the red cell could lead to the use of a new oral medication -- called sotrastaurin -- to treat the deadly infection. The malaria pathogen targets a particular enzyme called PKC, which weakens the the protein chain, dismantling the cells and causing them to collapse. But sotrastaurin blocks P. falciparum's interaction with PKC. Without that interaction, Greenbaum says, the parasites cant reproduce. They are sort of trapped inside the host cell and if they cant get out, they cant continue their lifecycle and within a couple of hours, they start to die, Greenbaum said.

Researchers led by Greenbaum tested the experimental drug, now in clinical trials to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients, and the compound dramatically reduced the number of P. falciparum malaria parasites in infected laboratory mice. Because sotrastaurin targets human cellular proteins, Greenbaum says P. falciparum cant develop resistance to the drug which has made quinine and artemisinin drugs to treat malaria less effective in recent years. An article by Doron Greenbaum and colleagues at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland describing how the malaria parasite reproduces itself is published in the journal Cell, Host and Microbe.

Researchers Discover the Biological Mechanism of Malaria Infection
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Feces transplant may relieve severe diarrhea, study says
Fri, Jan 18, 2013 - It may sound like the most unappealing treatment available, but a European study has concluded that inserting fecal material from a healthy person into the gut of somebody with severe diarrhea may cure their problem better than antibiotics.

The study, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved patients who had repeated bouts of diarrhea caused by a bacterium known as Clostridium difficile, which can take over the intestines after antibiotic treatment has killed off the beneficial bacteria found in the gut. About 3 million people in the US are infected annually with the bacterium, known as C diff, which spreads mainly through hospitals, nursing homes and doctors offices. When it controls the gut, it can be hard to eradicate. Antibiotics typically only work in 15 percent to 26 percent of patients with C diff, and after repeated rounds of treatment, the drugs become less effective. The efficacy of antibiotic therapy decreases with subsequent recurrences, and it seems reasonable to initiate treatment with donor-feces infusion after the second or third relapse, researchers led by Josbert Keller of the University of Amsterdam wrote.

Keller and his colleagues compared three treatments in a small trial. Thirteen volunteers with C diff received a standard antibiotic four times a day for 14 days. After 10 weeks, four were free of bacteria-related diarrhea. Another 13 patients had the same drug therapy after drinking a solution to clean out the bowel, known as bowel lavage. That worked in three cases. The remaining 16 volunteers, had a brief treatment with the antibiotic, combined with bowel lavage, followed by the infusion of 500 milliliters of diluted donor feces through a tube that went into the nose, down the throat and into the small intestine. In the three cases where the treatment failed, the doctors re-treated patients with fecal material from a different donor. That worked in all but one case.

Among the volunteers in the non-transplant groups who had a relapse, 18 were later given a fecal transplant. It cured 15 of them, although four of the 15 needed two treatments. Ive done 90 of these now in the last four-and-a-half years, said Colleen Kelly of Brown Universitys Alpert Medical School, who was not connected with the study, but uses fecal transplant in her practice. In patient after patient who has failed multiple courses of antibiotic, if you give them a dose of stool, they get better, she said. When side effects were tallied in the transplant group, 94 percent of patients reported diarrhea, 31 percent had cramping and 19 percent had belching, but all of those disappeared within three hours. Another 19 percent ultimately reported constipation after treatment.

Feces transplant may relieve severe diarrhea, study says - Taipei Times
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Mar 13, 2013 #4

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Malaria vaccine trial in jeopardy by sequester...

Sequestration Puts Malaria Vaccine Trial in Jeopardy
March 12, 2013 No buzz is heard. But you can almost feel the vibration of 10,000 mosquitoes.

Instinctively, you scratch, even though no insect is freely flying. The females are attracted to body heat to feed on blood - and in about a minute create a macabre hand art inside this bucket. Welcome to the mosquito insectary at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Its where insects are grown and vaccines are developed. Scientists here want to create the first malaria vaccine the world has known - to protect U.S. soldiers in malaria-prone countries. Drug companies would produce the vaccine and extend its protection to half the worlds population that lives in countries where malaria is present.

But, officials say the mandatory budget cuts, called sequestration, will affect further testing of a potentially cutting-edge malaria vaccine, soon to be published. Colonel Michael Kozar directs the militarys infectious disease research. Without funding to actually conduct the trial, it will delay development of that vaccine," said Colonel Kozar. "It will delay us getting an answer to determining if this is a real breakthrough or just a fluke.

Kozar says sequestration will cut about one and a half billion dollars from research and development. He says for the labs here at Walter Reed, that's about a 10 percent reduction, which could take some labs down to maintenance, not research. Research at Walter Reed depends on volunteers.who come into the lab regularly to get bitten on purpose. For vaccine trials, each volunteer is given a cup filled with five malaria-infected mosquitoes. They place their forearm over the cup. The mosquitoes are given five minutes to feed.

Keenan Bailey volunteered for a recent trial. He was vaccinated but still got malaria from the bites and was treated with medication. He worries about the upcoming budget cuts. "It's really defeating to see your contribution, the research of that being delayed," said Bailey. The CDC says malaria causes 655,000 deaths annually, 8 out of 10 of those victims are children. The researchers say their work might be for the military, but the benefit would be felt worldwide.

Source
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Mar 13, 2013 #5

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2004 Waltky?
Apr 29, 2013 #6

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Drug resistant strains of malaria parasite identified...

Parasite 'resistant to malaria drug artemisinin'
28 April 2013 - New drug-resistant strains of the parasite that causes malaria have been identified by scientists.

Researchers found parasites in western Cambodia that are genetically different from other strains around the world. These organisms are able to withstand treatment by artemisinin - a frontline drug in the fight against malaria. Reports of drug resistance in the area first emerged in 2008. The problem has since spread to other parts of South East Asia. The study is published in the journal Nature Genetics. The lead author, Dr Olivo Miotto, of the University of Oxford and Mahidol University in Thailand, said: "All the most effective drugs that we have had in the last few decades have been one by one rendered useless by the remarkable ability of this parasite to mutate and develop resistance. "Artemisinin right now works very well. It is the best weapon we have against the disease, and we need to keep it."

Genetic fingerprint

Western Cambodia has been described by scientists as a hotspot for malaria resistance. They do not understand why, but since the 1950s parasites there have developed a resistance to a succession of malaria drugs. The problem has spread to other parts of Asia and Africa. Now scientists are worried the same thing will happen with artemisinin. This drug is used widely around the world against the mosquito-borne disease and can treat an infection in a few days when it is used in combination with other drugs.

To investigate, scientists sequenced the genomes of 800 malaria-causing parasites (Plasmodium falciparum) collected from around the world. "When we compared the DNA of the parasites in Cambodia, they seem to have formed some new populations that we have not really seen elsewhere," Dr Miotto said. The international team found three distinct groups of drug-resistant parasites present in the area. The researchers said they did not yet understand what genetic mutations had occurred that enabled the parasites to withstand artemisinin treatment.

But they said that understanding their genetic fingerprint would help them to quickly spot and track these strains if they spread further. Dr Miotto said: "It could be a tool for detecting in real time the emergence of drug resistance." The World Health Organisation has stated that a major objective is to stop the spread of malaria parasites resistant to drugs. According to its latest estimates, there were about 219 million cases of malaria in 2010 and 660,000 deaths. Africa is the most affected continent: about 90% of all malaria deaths occur there.

BBC News - Parasite 'resistant to malaria drug artemisinin'
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Apr 29, 2013 #7

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Until they can figure out how to make as much off of NON-opium poppies
as they do from opium poppies,

I'd have to answer your question "Afghanistan's New Cash Crop?" with a resounding NO.

The thing IS, the non-0's CURE; the 0's cause addiction;
if I'm in biz to make bux, I'm going to have to go with the guaranteed RETURN customers,
who buy at MY prices, not some regulated amount.

America would be a good place to do it, however ~
not only would it be beneficial, as medicine,
it would also cross-pollinate, thereby RUINING, any of the heirlooms.
Apr 25, 2014 #8

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Doctors w/o Borders advocating new Malaria Chemoprevention for kids...

Trial: Malaria Chemoprevention Protects Children
April 24, 2014 ~ The non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres, has launched a new, malaria prevention campaign in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa aimed at protecting the illnesses' most vulnerable population - children under the age of five.

During the campaigns at the height of malaria season - from July to October - young children will be offered so-called chemoprevention drugs. Small children are at highest risk of dying from malaria, a mosquito-borne parasitic illness that claimed the lives of some three-quarters of a million people in 2012, most of them children and babies in sub-Saharan Africa. Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, is planning to roll out mass seasonal malaria chemoprevention campaigns, known as SMCs, in the Sahel sub-region to prevent new cases of the disease in countries where malaria is widespread. These nations include Senegal, Gambia, Niger, Burkino Faso and Mali.

In a 2013 SMC trial in Niger, the organization treated more than 200,000 children between the ages of three and 59 months with chemoprevention drugs. Trials of the chemoprevention strategy in the last two years have shown a reduction of up to 83 percent in simple malaria cases; there's a similar percentage reduction in the number of cases of severe malaria. Estrella Lasry, tropical medicine adviser for the group, says the campaign was launched at the urging of the World Health Organization. "And what we do is we give drugs once a month that protect and they protect the children for about a month during those four months of high transmission," said Lasry.

A girl waits at Bossangoa hospital, where medics are treating a high number of children for malaria, malnutrition, anaemia and violence-related injuries inlcuding gunshot wounds

In Niger, during a trial in 2013, the anti-malaria compounds were made available in remote locations at health facilities, in the homes of village chiefs and in areas where public health workers go door-to-door. The organization deployed some 2,000 community health care workers to educate families about the benefits of chemoprevention and to encourage them to take their children to a distribution site.

Lasry says MSF chemoprevention campaigns do not use artemisinin-based drugs that are currently the "gold standard" to treat malaria infection. "We try to use different drugs so that even if we can potentially cause resistance, we are not causing resistance to the most effective drugs we have for treatment," she said. If they find malaria in any of the children, Lasry says they treat it. But she says there's a shortage of rapid diagnostic tests in Niger, for example, hampering efforts to treat malaria in endemic regions. While not a "miracle cure," officials say prevention drugs complement other malaria control strategies, including insecticide-treated bed nets.

Trial: Malaria Chemoprevention Protects Children
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WHO: Investing In Malaria Makes Sense
April 24, 2014 — In marking World Malaria Day on April 25, the World Health Organization says investing in malaria control is good health policy and makes good economic sense.

Great progress is being made in controlling malarial infection, and WHO officials think now is the time to capitalize on recent successes in the battle against this preventable and treatable disease. Dr. John Reeder, the WHO’s acting director of Global Malaria Program, says international funding for malaria control has increased from $100 million in 2000 to $1.94 billion in 2012, and that during that time malaria-related death rates have decreased 42 percent globally and 49 percent in Africa.

More than three million children’s lives have been saved, he says. “So, clearly, ramping up investment in malaria can work and does work," he said. "And we have seen things like the vast expansion of bed net programs. Over the last couple of years, it has gone from 70 million nets that went out in 2012 to 136 million last year. This year there is going to be something in the region of 200 million nets put out there." Despite this progress, however, malaria remains a worldwide scourge, especially in Africa, where WHO figures show 207 million cases, including 627,000 deaths. The U.N. health agency says 90 percent of these deaths have occurred among children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.

Laborer sleeps on a makeshift bed covered with a mosquito net on a hot summer morning, New Delhi

WHO notes 80 percent of malaria cases are found in 18 African countries, with Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo accounting for half of those cases. It says malaria disproportionately affects the poor and thwarts African economies. It estimates Africa loses $12 billion each year in lost productivity, and says the disease places a heavy burden on national health systems, accounting for as much as 40 percent of public health expenditure in some countries. Reeder says it is possible to slow the spread of the disease. But, he notes, one of the problems affecting malaria control is the difficulty of delivering effective programs in the context of a weakened health system. “So, malaria in itself is a disease, which has got particular needs and really needs an investment," he said. "But part of that investment really has got to be in strengthening health systems in a more general way."

Reeder says growing resistance to Artemisnin-based Combination Therapies, the most effective anti-malarials on the market, could unravel the hard-won gains to date. Efforts to contain resistance and research and development of new tools to control the disease are important, he says, even if it requires lots of money. The International Roll Back Malaria Program will need $5.1 billion every year through 2020 to provide insecticide-treated nets, indoor spraying, quick diagnostic testing and treatment for all those at risk.

http://www.voanews.com/content/inve...s-good-health-and-economic-sense/1900573.html
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Last edited: Apr 25, 2014
May 1, 2016 #9

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Malaria outbreak in Colombia linked to illegal mining...

Colombia’s illegal mining linked to malaria outbreak
Sun, May 01, 2016 - PERFECT BREEDING GROUNDS: There have been 18,524 cases of malaria, compared with 4,740 a year earlier, which is being blamed on standing water from illegal mines

Colombia’s widespread illegal mining is blamed for causing environmental damage and holding workers in slave-like conditions — and now is also being blamed for a malaria outbreak. Critics point to stagnant water buildups at the clandestine sites and poor sanitary conditions at the workers’ camps for an increase in mosquitoes spreading the disease, which has quadrupled in jungle regions of the hard-hit and impoverished western department of Choco. “The country had more or less controlled its malaria problem... The death rate had dropped significantly,” Colombian Minister of Health Alejandro Gaviria said this week. “But because of illegal mining ... we’ve had hotspots since last year and especially this year.”

A miner stands at an entrance of an unlicensed gold mine in San Antonio village, in a mountainous area near the municipality of Buritica in northwestern Antioquia Department, Colombia

Speaking on RCN radio, Gaviria said that malaria was especially on the rise in Choco — which stretches from the border with Panama along a stretch of Colombia’s Pacific coastline — as well as the Bajo Cauca area to the east. The Colombian National Health Institute counted 18,524 malaria cases and about 300 cases of the disease’s more severe strain. A year earlier, only 4,740 cases of malaria were recorded. However, outbreaks of malaria due to clandestine mining are not new. “Population displacement linked to the exploitation of gold mines [and resulting deforestation] has previously created isolated epidemics of malaria” in Latin America, the health institute said. Mining is a major source of revenue for Colombia.

In 2012, the last year for which official figures are available, legal mining accounted for 2.3 percent of GDP, or US$8.5 billion. However, authorities say that more than half of Colombia’s mining sites are illegal. In these illegal mines, which help finance illegal armed groups, “excavators dig huge holes where water accumulates, perfect breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes,” University of Antioquia researcher Ivan Dario Velez said. And the sites where the miners set up camp “usually lack public utilities and have very poor hygiene conditions, which encourages the spread of mosquito and thus the disease,” he said. Malaria symptoms include feverish headaches, chills, fatigue, nausea and vomiting.

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Oct 22, 2016 #10

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Neighbors used to make a tea out of old cigarette butts to kill garden bugs...

Tobacco Plants Found Capable of Producing Malaria Drug
October 20, 2016 - Scientists say they have figured out a way to use tobacco plants to produce artemisinin, a highly effective anti-malaria drug.

Malaria infects an estimated 200 million people each year, resulting in 400,000 deaths. The drug artemisinin is sometimes used to treat the mosquito-borne illness, clearing the parasite from the bloodstream within 48 hours, according to experts. However, it is very expensive. Artemisinin comes from an herbal plant grown in China called sweet wormwood. It takes 18 months to grow, extract and produce only a small amount of the effective compound, according to bioengineer Shashi Kumar at the U.N. International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in New Delhi. “That increases the cost of this drug, and the people who are suffering most and poor are not able to afford this costly drug," Kumar said. "That is why we are looking at some source which can be grown everywhere, like the African continent or the Indian continent, easily. Tobacco is that crop.”

A farm worker harvests tobacco leaves at a farm in Harare, Zimbabwe, March 3, 2015. Scientists have found that malaria-fighting compound artemisinin can be grown in tobacco plants.

Kumar and colleagues have figured out a way to insert wormwood genes into tobacco plants. Tobacco is a hardy plant and when the gene is inserted, a precursor compound of artemisinin shows up in its broad sturdy leaves. Scientists at the U.N. Center tested the effectiveness of tobacco-produced artemisinin on rodents infected with Plasmodium berghei, a parasite that causes malaria in rats and is often used as an experimental model for genetic engineered treatments. Kumar said the artemisinin from tobacco leaves was more effective than the currently available drug. But more tests are needed to see whether the tobacco-derived artemisinin drug is equally effective against P. falciparum, the parasite that causes the most dangerous form of the disease in humans.

А malaria worker is seen carrying a traditional medicine kit in a village near Pailin, Cambodia, Aug. 29, 2009. Scientists have found that conventional kits could be replaced with artemisinin, a cheap but highly effective anti-malaria drug.

Kumar and colleagues are now looking at ways to grow the anti-malaria drug in other, more edible plants. “What we can do [is] we put this drug into edible plants like lettuce or spinach, where you can just make a powder, put that powder in a capsule and the capsule can be stored like in medical stores or anywhere from where the people can easily buy at a very cheap or very affordable price.” News about tobacco-grown artemisinin was published in the Cell press journal Molecular Plant. Kumar says no big tobacco companies have come forward volunteering to produce artemisinin. However, he is hopeful, given that the technology will be made freely available, that there will be some takers.

Tobacco Plants Found Capable of Producing Malaria Drug
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Fighting Malaria by Changing the Flavor of Humans
October 12, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Have you ever noticed how some people seem to be bitten by mosquitoes more than anyone else?

Apparently some people taste better to malaria mosquitoes than others, and scientists are trying to figure out why, so they can turn that information into a repellent to protect us all from malaria. Such a repellent might be able to prevent some of the 214 million cases of malaria the World Health Organization says occurred in 2015, mostly in Africa. About 440,000 people, most of them children, died of malaria, the WHO said. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have found evidence of what attracts malaria mosquitoes to humans for a blood meal, and smell isn’t the only thing.

Christopher Potter, assistant professor of neuroscience, is working on the sensing ability of mosquitoes. Unlike humans who have one nose, Potter says, mosquitoes have three pairs of noses. These include two antennae and two maxillary palps, which are fuzzy appendages below the insect’s head and are parallel to the feeding needle, Potter said. At the end of that feeding needle or proboscis, are the labella, two small regions with neurons that recognize smells and tastes. “So this suggests that the mosquito brain might also have a region of the brain that’s dedicated to flavor, to combining smell and taste,” he said. “And that is something they are very likely doing when they are actually landing on us and looking around for a place to bite,” he added. “They are actually smelling us and tasting us, and perhaps that means they are also flavoring us and that is part of what they are looking for when they’re trying to decide who they should bite from and where they are going to bite.”

Potter and his colleagues made this discovery about the malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, by making certain neurons in the insect’s noses fluoresce, or glow green. They wanted to trace those green-glowing external sensory neurons to the brain. The green-glowing neurons lighted up in the brain when they were exposed to complex odors. These help the mosquito distinguish human blood from that of other warm-blooded animals. It’s the first time scientists were able to pinpoint the exact location of the senses of smell and taste in mosquitoes.

By studying the smell- and taste-detecting neurons, the finding suggests that it’s possible mosquitoes like not only the smell of humans but our flavor as well. “The long-term goal is to identify better repellents, things that will be better, safer, cheaper and more effective that we can manufacture on a larger scale and distribute it across the world.” Currently the insect repellent DEET is widely used in malaria endemic regions, but it’s not 100 percent effective, and a fair amount of the chemical needs to be applied to the skin to repel mosquitoes. The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Fighting Malaria by Changing the Flavor of Humans
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Last edited: Oct 22, 2016

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