Current Status of Malaria and Potential for Control

Abstract

Malaria remains one of the world's worst health problems with 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths annually; these deaths are primarily among children under 5 years of age and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. Of significance, more people are dying from malaria today than 30 years ago. This review considers the factors which have contributed to this gloomy picture, including those which relate to the vector, the female anopheline mosquito; to human activity such as creating new mosquito breeding sites, the impact of increased numbers of people, and how their migratory behavior can increase the incidence and spread of malaria; and the problems of drug resistance by the parasites to almost all currently available antimalarial drugs. In a selective manner, this review describes what is being done to ameliorate this situation both in terms of applying existing methods in a useful or even crucial role in control and prevention and in terms of new additions to the antimalarial armory that are being developed. Topics covered include biological control of mosquitoes, the use of insecticide-impregnated bed nets, transgenic mosquitoes manipulated for resistance to malaria parasites, old and new antimalarial drugs, drug resistance and how best to maintain the useful life of antimalarials, immunity to malaria and the search for antimalarial vaccines, and the malaria genome project and the potential benefits to accrue from it

Virulence in malaria: an evolutionary viewpoint

“…Much of this variation can be attributed to prior exposure and acquired immunity, but clearly other factors operate too. These include parasite species (most mortality is due to infection with Plasmodium falciparum), age, nutrition, inoculum size, socioeconomic factors, host genetics and parasite genetics (reviewed in Greenwood et al 1991;Marsh 1992;Baird 1998;Phillips 2001;Miller et al 2002). The relative importance of these different factors has not been well quantified.…”

Determinación de la resistencia a insecticidas organofosforados, carbamatos y piretroides en tres poblaciones de Anopheles albimanus (Diptera: Culicidae) de Panamá

“…Sin embargo, en la actualidad el incremento considerable de las enfermedades transmitidas por mosquitos ha originado un grave problema de salud pública, debido en parte al desarrollo de resistencia a los insecticidas en las poblaciones de mosquitos (6,7) y de resistencia de los parásitos a los medicamentos antipalúdicos (8,9). El desarrollo de resistencia a los insecticidas en mosquitos vectores de enfermedades como la malaria, es una grave amenaza debido a que una de las principales opciones para la prevención y el control, es el uso de mosquiteros impregnados con insecticidas, el rociamiento de acción residual en los interiores de las viviendas y el uso de larvicidas en criaderos de anofelinos (10).…”

Estudio piloto de la eficacia y de los efectos sobre los gametocitos del esquema artesunato-mefloquina-primaquina para la malaria por Plasmodium falciparum

“…A randomized clinical trial was conducted. Treatment compliance was supervised, with a clinical and parasitological assessment on days 1,2,3,7,14,21,28,35, and 42 to evaluate response rate according to the WHO 2003 protocol. Results.…”