Genetics

Fast-changing genes help malaria to hide in the human body

A study of the way malaria parasites behave when they live in human red blood cells has revealed that they can rapidly change the proteins on the surface of their host cells during the course of a single infection in order ...

Medical research

Friendly bacteria are protective against malaria

In a breakthrough study to be published on the December 4th issue of the prestigious scientific journal Cell, a research team led by Miguel Soares at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC; Portugal) discovered that specific ...

Medical research

Why humans don't suffer from chimpanzee malaria

A genetic region responsible for red blood cell invasion was among a small number of areas found to differ between the genomes of malaria parasites that affect chimpanzees and Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite responsible ...

Medical research

A new way to diagnose malaria, using magnetic fields

Over the past several decades, malaria diagnosis has changed very little. After taking a blood sample from a patient, a technician smears the blood across a glass slide, stains it with a special dye, and looks under a microscope ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Fighting resistance to antimalarial drug

When it comes to the emergence of antimalarial drug resistance, it's not a question of 'if' but 'when'. In order to keep up with the quickly evolving Plasmodium parasite - the cause of malaria - new ways to treat and ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

The parasite that escaped out of Africa

An international team of scientists has traced the origin of Plasmodium vivax, the second-worst malaria parasite of humans, to Africa, according to a study published this week in Nature Communications. Until recently, the ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Researchers identify genetic marker of resistance to key malaria drug

An international team of researchers has discovered a way to identify, at a molecular level, malaria-causing Plasmodium falciparum parasites that are resistant to artemisinin, the key drug for treating this disease. The research ...

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