News tagged with river blindness

Researchers unlock how key drug kills tropical parasites

In a major breakthrough that comes after decades of research and nearly half a billion treatments in humans, scientists have finally unlocked how a key anti-parasitic drug kills the worms brought on by the ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Nov 10, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Scientists reveal how an old drug could have a new use for treating river blindness

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered a potential new use for the drug closantel, currently the standard treatment for sheep and cattle infected with liver fluke. The new research suggests that the ...

Medicine & Health / Medical research

created Feb 09, 2010 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Study sheds new light on river blindness parasite

The team found that a bacterium inside the worm acts as a 'disguise' for the parasite, resulting in the immune system reacting to it in an ineffective way. The bacteria protect the worm from the body's natural defences, ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Jan 12, 2011 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

How parasites react to the mouse immune system may help to shape their control

How parasites use different life-history strategies to beat our immune systems may also provide insight into the control of diseases, such as elephantiasis and river blindness, which afflict some of the world's poorest communities ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Oct 19, 2010 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Scientists develop novel test that identifies river blindness

October 6, 2010 – For Immediate Release – Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have developed the first screening method that rapidly identifies individuals with active river blindness, a parasitic disease ...

Medicine & Health / Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

created Oct 06, 2010 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

'Magic potion' in fly spit may shoo away blinding eye disease

Researchers are reporting the first identification of a "magic potion" of proteins in the saliva of the black fly that help this blood-sucking pest spread parasites that cause "river blindness," a devastating ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Apr 06, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

A milestone toward ending river blindness in the Western Hemisphere by 2012

An international team of researchers led by Rodrigo Gonzalez of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala reports that the transmission of onchocerciasis or river blindness has been broken in Escuintla, Guatemala, one of the ...

Medicine & Health / Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

created Mar 31, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

The fly family genealogy

Certain blackflies can cause river blindness in humans. But which ones? Wageningen University candidate Luis Miguel Hernandez systematized the relationships within the blackfly subgenus Trichodagmia and came up with some ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Apr 11, 2011 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Neglected tropical diseases -- momentum must be continued

This week's edition of The Lancet sees the first in a four-part Series on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) -- conditions which almost exclusively affect the world's poorest people, namely those 2.7 billion people living ...

Medicine & Health / Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

created Jan 01, 2010 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0