Skeeters finally prove their worth

[The Battousai]

Source

In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.
The study was only a small proof-of-principle test, and its approach is not practical on a large scale. However, it shows that scientists may finally be on the right track to developing an effective vaccine against one of mankind's top killers. A vaccine that uses modified live parasites just entered human testing.

"Malaria vaccines are moving from the laboratory into the real world," Dr. Carlos Campbell wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. He works for PATH, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, a Seattle-based global health foundation.

The new study "reminds us that the whole malaria parasite is the most potent immunizing" agent, even though it is harder to develop a vaccine this way and other leading candidates take a different approach, he wrote.

Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, mostly children under 5 and especially in Africa. Infected mosquitoes inject immature malaria parasites into the skin when they bite; these travel to the liver where they mature and multiply. From there, they enter the bloodstream and attack red blood cells — the phase that makes people sick.

People can develop immunity to malaria if exposed to it many times. The drug chloroquine can kill parasites in the final bloodstream phase, when they are most dangerous.

Scientists tried to take advantage of these two factors, by using chloroquine to protect people while gradually exposing them to malaria parasites and letting immunity develop.

They assigned 10 volunteers to a "vaccine" group and five others to a comparison group. All were given chloroquine for three months, and exposed once a month to about a dozen mosquitoes — malaria-infected ones in the vaccine group and non-infected mosquitoes in the comparison group.

That was to allow the "vaccine" effect to develop. Next came a test to see if it was working.

All 15 stopped taking chloroquine. Two months later, all were bitten by malaria-infected mosquitoes. None of the 10 in the vaccine group developed parasites in their bloodstreams; all five in the comparison group did.

The study was done in a lab at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and was funded by two foundations and a French government grant.

"This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product, but a way to show how whole parasites can be used like a vaccine to protect against disease, said one of the Dutch researchers, Dr. Robert Sauerwein.

"It's more of an in-depth study of the immune factors that might be able to generate a very protective type of response," said Dr. John Treanor, a vaccine specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., who had no role in the study.

The concept already is in commercial development. A company in Rockville, Md. — Sanaria Inc. — is testing a vaccine using whole parasites that have been irradiated to weaken them, hopefully keeping them in an immature stage in the liver to generate immunity but not cause illness.

Two other reports in the New England Journal show that resistance is growing to artemisinin, the main drug used against malaria in the many areas where chloroquine is no longer effective. Studies in Thailand and Cambodia found the malaria parasite is less susceptible to artemisinin, underscoring the urgent need to develop a vaccine.

 

[E-Man]

LMAO this reminds me of a Dave Chappelle joke....

 

[bullets]

This is great news. I feel deep sympathy for anyone that suffers from malaria.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Interesting.

They say that every creature;no matter how small, has its place in nature. And that removing even 1, could throw the whole food chain/circle of life out of order. A lot of my fellow biologist friends and Ihave sat for hours trying to figure out how the environment would suffer if mosquitoes suddenly disappeared. We came up w/ nuthin

 

[ross2287]

I thought this thread was going to be about the pros of *********ion...

 

[The Battousai]

Interesting.

They say that every creature;no matter how small, has its place in nature. And that removing even 1, could throw the whole food chain/circle of life out of order. A lot of my fellow biologist friends and Ihave sat for hours trying to figure out how the environment would suffer if mosquitoes suddenly disappeared. We came up w/ nuthin

Dragonflies would have to make do with something else, but that's all I can think of

 

[knowsbleed]

LMAO this reminds me of a Dave Chappelle joke....

I thought this thread was going to be about the pros of *********ion...

Exactly. Misleading title.

Which makes me wonder why I clicked on it in the first place.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Dragonflies would have to make do with something else, but that's all I can think of

Dragonflies eat mosquitoes?

 

[bullets]

I thought this thread was going to be about the pros of *********ion...

Give it a page or two.

 

[The Battousai]

Dragonflies eat mosquitoes?

Yep - main part of their diet (though they also eat flies, butterflies, etc.). One of those random things I remember from reading things like ZooBooks as a child

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Haha, you'd kill on jeopardy

 

[SuperFerret]

Interesting.

They say that every creature;no matter how small, has its place in nature. And that removing even 1, could throw the whole food chain/circle of life out of order. A lot of my fellow biologist friends and Ihave sat for hours trying to figure out how the environment would suffer if mosquitoes suddenly disappeared. We came up w/ nuthin

Mosquitoes, like flies and fleas and many other insects, are common vectors for spreading disease, thus they have an integral role in population control. They've been worth something this whole time, and one could argue that this idea of using mosquitoes to administer vaccines are diluting their natural purpose.

 

[Drizzle]

 

[TEDDY]

What are yall talking about? Skeeter has always been awesome.


If your car horn dies, just roll your windows down and have him holler!

 

[knowsbleed]

What are yall talking about? Skeeter has always been awesome.


If your car horn dies, just roll your windows down and have him holler!

Kids here will have zero idea of what you're referring to... *meep meep*

 

[E-Man]

What are yall talking about? Skeeter has always been awesome.


If your car horn dies, just roll your windows down and have him holler!

I so wanna post those Doug Uncensored videos on Youtube right now.

 

[ross2287]

Today's cartoons suck compared to what was on when I was growing up.

 

[E-Man]

Yeah Doug was the best when I was growing up. Who couldn't love "Banging on a Trash Can?"

 

[The Battousai]

Mosquitoes, like flies and fleas and many other insects, are common vectors for spreading disease, thus they have an integral role in population control. They've been worth something this whole time, and one could argue that this idea of using mosquitoes to administer vaccines are diluting their natural purpose.

I think you're jumping the gun a bit.

First off you're assuming they have a "purpose" and that it is the act of spreading disease (technically, it is just the females who feed off blood).

Secondly, disease-carrying mosquitos wouldn't disappear or thin out as a result of this. I wouldn't worry about that happening (climate change is more likely candidate for that, and even then there's a possibility for some to adapt).

Lastly, they'd use the vaccine-carrying mosquitos where needed and in controlled situations.

 

[SuperFerret]

I think you're jumping the gun a bit.

First off you're assuming they have a "purpose" and that it is the act of spreading disease (technically, it is just the females who feed off blood).

Secondly, disease-carrying mosquitos wouldn't disappear or thin out as a result of this. I wouldn't worry about that happening (climate change is more likely candidate for that, and even then there's a possibility for some to adapt).

Lastly, they'd use the vaccine-carrying mosquitos where needed and in controlled situations.

Every species has a niche, and it's been shown that many insects are vectors for disease, and simply because the females are the only ones who drink blood is no reason to assume that a mosquitoes "purpose" isn't to help spread disease, since you do need males to help make more females.

I never said that disease-carriers would disappear or thin out because of this, simply that, as with all vaccines, the disease will lose it's potency and, if the mosquito has the purpose of disease spreading vector, having the disease be less potent also decreases the mosquitoes role in population control (something our overpopulated species needs desperately).

Finally, I find this idea to be very risky. Who's to say what side-effects this study will have, as they are modifying the malaria to serve as a vaccine of sorts.

 

[Metamorpho1977]

Source

Isn't this how Mimic with Mira Sorvino started?

 

[Jager X]

Jeez, so early in the morning and I see thought I spotted a thread that shows appreciation for women who can shoot a load.

 

[E-Man]

Jeez, so early in the morning and I see thought I spotted a thread that shows appreciation for women who can shoot a load.

Your posts are killing me. lol

 

[ross2287]

Yeah Doug was the best when I was growing up. Who couldn't love "Banging on a Trash Can?"

[YT]uIx9fuWy1cU[/YT]

 

[Jager X]

Killer tofu, *****!! Eeaayeeee!!!!