The article I read was about a possible new "cure" or vaccine for malaria. If you want to read the whole article, you can click here.
Malaria is a difficult disease to try to cure in many regions because it has adapted and become resistant to many of the vaccines previously used. So researchers in Florida have been trying to find a new molecular compound in marine microbes found deep under the ocean's surface.
A scientist at the University of Central Florida, Dr. Debopam Chakrabarti, recently received a grant to research marine microorganisms in a hope to develop an anti-malarial drug. Chakrabarti and a team of researchers have formed alliances with a few oceanographic institutes in order to aid in acquiring the marine microorganisms for their experiments.
Based on past research, they've already found 250 compounds that could be effective in combating malaria and hope to find more what with the extreme diversity of sea life.
However, finding the compounds in the first place is not the only obstacle these researchers will face. They then need to test each compounds, not only for effectiveness against malaria, but also to ensure the compound won't kill the person or cause other harmful side effects. And once that's finished, they need to develop a drug that is easy to manufacture and cheap to make, so it has to follow a few rules outlined in the article.
All of it has been a long but very important process already, and it's just getting started. The statistics stated at the bottom of the article just go to show how very important this mission is for many regions of the world, but some people believe that it might be impractical seeing as how many of the regions still facing epidemics of malaria are impoverished.
Overall, the article was pretty hopeful in my opinion. Even though malaria has been eradicated in the US, many countries like Africa still face epidemics and the drug resistance is a huge problem for them. If these researchers do find a compound in marine microorganisms that is effective against malaria, it could be a huge step in creating a vaccine that might not be so susceptible to resistance.
This article connects to our class because it relates to immunology and vaccinations, which we recently and currently are talking about. We've been talking about vaccination almost since the beginning, like when we talked about inoculation with small pox. Also, malaria has mutated, which is how it has become resistant to many anti-malarial drugs, which we talked about when we did influenza and that antigenic shift activity. Lastly, it deals with an infectious epidemic disease that has been eradicated within the US, like polio, but still runs rampant in other countries.
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ReplyDeleteFrom this article, Malaria reminds me a lot of MDR TB. Both of these diseases have adapted to their environment and become resistant to the drugs used against them. Multi-drug resistant diseases are dangerous because they are not only resistant to one but many drugs. The hard part of Malaria is the fact that it is epidemic in places like Africa, where medical care is not the greatest. This poses a threat because Malaria is stronger than the drugs being used against them. They can not find drugs to cure this disease and therefore it stays epidemic in these areas. I am glad to hear that they have started to find drugs that work against Malaria. The one question I have is, if MDR Malaria can change to become resisitant against many different drugs then why will it not change for this drug?
ReplyDeleteMalaria is a huge issue in the world and it would be great if there was a better way to prevent the disease. It is so hard to stop the spread of this disease in third world countries especially, but in other places as well because the pathogen is carried and transmitted by mosquitoes. I know there are several programs that help donate netting people can sleep under to help prevent Malaria, but they can;t stay under a net all the time. It would be amazing if there was a better, constant way these people could stay protected and stop the spread of Malaria.
ReplyDeleteI think it's really interesting that researchers are able to discover cures for diseases by looking in obscure places like deep below the ocean's surface. It just goes to show that there is so much out there that we don't know of. With research comes more knowledge. The more we research the more we will know of ourselves and the diseases that we contract. These diseases, malaria included, can never all be eradicated but we can do our best to deal with using vaccines. As Tina said, this article is very hopefully for the future of malaria.
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