PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Global research team develops fine-scale risk maps to tackle malaria in Haiti

Global research team develops fine-scale risk maps to tackle malaria in Haiti
2021-06-02
(Press-News.org) Researchers from Telethon Kids Institute and Curtin University in Perth and Tulane University in New Orleans have developed sophisticated data modelling that could help eradicate malaria in Haiti. Haiti is the poorest country in the Caribbean - beset by natural disasters - and is one of the few countries in the region that have not mostly wiped out the mosquito-borne disease. Telethon Kids Institute researcher Associate Professor Ewan Cameron led the team, using a range of different health data to create a complete picture of where malaria infections are taking place in Haiti. This information has been used to directly inform Haiti's national response to malaria. The team's findings have been published in the journal eLife. Director of the Malaria Risk Stratification at Telethon Kids Institute and an Associate Professor at Curtin University, Dr Cameron said the team used mathematical modelling to work out where people diagnosed with malaria were most likely to reside. "Monthly counts of malaria cases arriving at local health facilities are routinely gathered by the Haitian health system, but these data don't record at a granular level where those patients live, or where they were most likely to be infected," he said. "Most people will be bitten in or around their homes, so the interventions we have to fight malaria aim to interrupt transmission there, whether that's spraying for mosquitos or delivering bed nets and anti-malarial medications. "By using a wide range of data - from satellite images of the terrain to hand-written medical logs - we've been able to develop a fine-scale malaria risk map to help public health experts find these at-risk populations." Almost 9,000 cases of malaria were reported in Haiti in 2019 and determining which areas are most at risk is a crucial line of defence against infection. Dr Cameron said this fine-scale data could be the final piece of the puzzle that helps stamp out malaria in Haiti. "Haiti is seen as a place where malaria eradication can be achieved," he said. "Neighbouring countries like the Dominican Republic are much wealthier and have been able to reduce malaria to really negligible amounts but, working with fewer resources, Haiti has not yet been able to achieve the same results. "We hope that this work can help the country to better target its interventions and work towards that goal." Researcher Alyssa Young from Tulane University in New Orleans, working in Haiti, said accessing some of the more remote parts of the island to gather data was a significant challenge. "During the rainy season, some of the health facilities we visited were out in really remote locations," she said. "They'd often be a small building on a remote beach - that was the community health facility. But the people who work at those facilities were incredible, and very committed to the goal of eliminating malaria in Haiti." Telethon Kids Institute epidemiologist and the Kerry Stokes Chair of Child Health at Curtin University, Professor Pete Gething, said the team hopes to be able to contribute to the goal of eliminating malaria in Haiti. "Haiti is really the last bastion of malaria in the whole of Mesoamerica, just a stones-throw from the US, so it's a really interesting place," he said. "We're making maps that are being used by Haiti's malaria control program to fundamentally change where they're targeting their interventions." The research in Haiti is part of a collaboration that has been operating since 2017, funded by the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

INFORMATION:


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Global research team develops fine-scale risk maps to tackle malaria in Haiti

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

How platelets help resolve lung inflammation

How platelets help resolve lung inflammation
2021-06-02
Treating patients with acute respiratory failure is a constant challenge in intensive care medicine. In most cases, the underlying cause is lung inflammation triggered by a bacterial infection or - more rarely, despite being frequently observed at present due to the corona pandemic - a viral infection. During the inflammation, cells of the immune system - the white blood cells - migrate to the lungs and fight the pathogens. At the same time, however, they also cause "collateral damage" in the lung tissue. If the inflammatory reaction is not resolved in time, this can result in chronic inflammation with permanent impairment of lung function. Together with colleagues from London, Madrid and Munich, a research team at the University ...

MicroRNAs may contribute to atherogenesis in a cell-type-dependent manner

MicroRNAs may contribute to atherogenesis in a cell-type-dependent manner
2021-06-02
Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have uncovered potential mechanisms by which microRNAs (miRNA) drive atherogenesis in a cell-type-specific manner. Published in the Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology journal, the study provides novel insight into the miRNA profiles of the main cell types involved in atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is the underlying cause of most cardiovascular diseases and one of the leading causes of mortality in the world. During atherosclerosis, arteries become progressively narrow and thick due to the formation of plaques containing cholesterol deposits, calcium and cells, among other components. ...

Replicating patients' tumors to test different treatments

Replicating patients tumors to test different treatments
2021-06-02
Every tumour is different, every patient is different. So how do we know which treatment will work best for the patient and eradicate the cancer? In order to offer a personalised treatment that best suits the case being treated, a team of scientists led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, had already developed a spheroidal reproduction of tumours that integrates the tumour cells, but also their microenvironment. However, the immune system had not yet been taken into account, even though it can either be strengthened or destroyed by the treatment given to the patient. Today, the Geneva team has succeeded in integrating two types of immune cells that come directly from the patient into the spheroidal structure, ...

Mapping intermittent methane emissions across the Permian Basin

Mapping intermittent methane emissions across the Permian Basin
2021-06-02
The Permian Basin, located in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico, is the largest oil- and gas-producing region in the U.S. The oilfield operations emit methane, but quantifying the greenhouse gas is difficult because of the large area and the fact that many sources are intermittent emitters. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology Letters have conducted an extensive airborne campaign with imaging spectrometers and identified large methane sources across this area. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 38% of the nation's total oil and 17% of natural gas production took place in the Permian Basin in 2020. Therefore, quantifying emissions from these operations, which continue to expand rapidly, is ...

Healthy diet before, during pregnancy linked to lower complications, NIH study suggests

2021-06-02
A healthy diet around the time of conception through the second trimester may reduce the risk of several common pregnancy complications, suggests a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Expectant women in the study who scored high on any of three measures of healthy eating had lower risks for gestational diabetes, pregnancy-related blood pressure disorders and preterm birth. The study was conducted by Cuilin Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues at NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). It appears in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. ...

Researchers learn how swimming ducks balance water pressure in their feathers while diving

2021-06-02
A team of students working with Jonathan Boreyko, associate professor in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, has discovered the method ducks use to suspend water in their feathers while diving, allowing them to shake it out when surfacing. The discovery opens the door for applications in marine technology. Findings were published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Boreyko has a well-established body of work in the area of fluid mechanics, including the invention of a fog harp and the use of contained, recirculated steam as a cooling device. As his research has progressed throughout the past decade, the mechanics of duck de-wetting has been one of his longest-running projects. "I got this idea when I was at Duke University," ...

Young T. rexes had a powerful bite, capable of exerting one-sixth the force of an adult

2021-06-02
Jack Tseng loves bone-crunching animals -- hyenas are his favorite -- so when paleontologist Joseph Peterson discovered fossilized dinosaur bones that had teeth marks from a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex, Tseng decided to try to replicate the bite marks and measure how hard those kids could actually chomp down. Last year, he and Peterson made a metal replica of a scimitar-shaped tooth of a 13-year-old juvie T. rex, mounted it on a mechanical testing frame commonly used in engineering and materials science, and tried to crack a cow legbone with it. Based on 17 successful attempts to match the depth and shape of the bite marks on the fossils -- he had to toss out some trials because the fresh bone slid around too much -- he determined that a juvenile could have exerted ...

World's smallest, best acoustic amplifier emerges from 50-year-old hypothesis

Worlds smallest, best acoustic amplifier emerges from 50-year-old hypothesis
2021-06-02
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have built the world's smallest and best acoustic amplifier. And they did it using a concept that was all but abandoned for almost 50 years. According to a paper published May 13 in Nature Communications, the device is more than 10 times more effective than the earlier versions. The design and future research directions hold promise for smaller wireless technology. Modern cell phones are packed with radios to send and receive phone calls, text messages and high-speed data. The more radios in a device, the more it can do. While most radio components, including amplifiers, are electronic, they can potentially ...

Atmospheric metal layers appear with surprising regularity

Atmospheric metal layers appear with surprising regularity
2021-06-02
Twice a day, at dusk and just before dawn, a faint layer of sodium and other metals begins sinking down through the atmosphere, about 90 miles high above the city of Boulder, Colorado. The movement was captured by one of the world's most sensitive "lidar" instruments and reported today in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters. The metals in those layers come originally from rocky material blasting into Earth's atmosphere from space, and the regularly appearing layers promise to help researchers understand better how earth's atmosphere interacts with space, even potentially how those interactions help support life. "This is an important discovery because we have never seen these dusk/dawn features before, and because these metal layers affect many things. The ...

'Prescription' to sit less, move more advised for mildly high blood pressure & cholesterol

2021-06-02
DALLAS, June 2, 2021 -- A "prescription" to sit less and move more is the optimal first treatment choice for reducing mild to moderately elevated blood pressure and blood cholesterol in otherwise healthy adults, according to the new American Heart Association scientific statement published today in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension. "The current American Heart Association guidelines for diagnosing high blood pressure and cholesterol recognize that otherwise healthy individuals with mildly or moderately elevated levels of these ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Post-LLM era: New horizons for AI with knowledge, collaboration, and co-evolution

“Sloshing” from celestial collisions solves mystery of how galactic clusters stay hot

Children poisoned by the synthetic opioid, fentanyl, has risen in the U.S. – eight years of national data shows

USC researchers observe mice may have a form of first aid

VUMC to develop AI technology for therapeutic antibody discovery

Unlocking the hidden proteome: The role of coding circular RNA in cancer

Advancing lung cancer treatment: Understanding the differences between LUAD and LUSC

Study reveals widening heart disease disparities in the US

The role of ubiquitination in cancer stem cell regulation

New insights into LSD1: a key regulator in disease pathogenesis

Vanderbilt lung transplant establishes new record

Revolutionizing cancer treatment: targeting EZH2 for a new era of precision medicine

Metasurface technology offers a compact way to generate multiphoton entanglement

Effort seeks to increase cancer-gene testing in primary care

Acoustofluidics-based method facilitates intracellular nanoparticle delivery

Sulfur bacteria team up to break down organic substances in the seabed

Stretching spider silk makes it stronger

Earth's orbital rhythms link timing of giant eruptions and climate change

Ammonia build-up kills liver cells but can be prevented using existing drug

New technical guidelines pave the way for widespread adoption of methane-reducing feed additives in dairy and livestock

Eradivir announces Phase 2 human challenge study of EV25 in healthy adults infected with influenza

New study finds that tooth size in Otaria byronia reflects historical shifts in population abundance

nTIDE March 2025 Jobs Report: Employment rate for people with disabilities holds steady at new plateau, despite February dip

Breakthrough cardiac regeneration research offers hope for the treatment of ischemic heart failure

Fluoride in drinking water is associated with impaired childhood cognition

New composite structure boosts polypropylene’s low-temperature toughness

While most Americans strongly support civics education in schools, partisan divide on DEI policies and free speech on college campuses remains

Revolutionizing surface science: Visualization of local dielectric properties of surfaces

LearningEMS: A new framework for electric vehicle energy management

Nearly half of popular tropical plant group related to birds-of-paradise and bananas are threatened with extinction

[Press-News.org] Global research team develops fine-scale risk maps to tackle malaria in Haiti