Since Halloween of 2008 Miller-McCune has been keeping an eye on bats’ noses. Their white noses, to be exact, reflecting a fungal infection clobbering those flying mammals in the United States’ Northeast and Midwest – and now as far north as Canada and as far southwest as Oklahoma. The fungus, Geomyces destructans, was first detected in the U.S. in January 2007 and quickly made itself known through unprecedented die-off of many species, four of them, like the Indiana bat, already on the endangered list. Wildlife officials have been concerned that if the fungus isn’t stopped, a lot ... Read More
Lifesaving Drug Praziquantel Too Expensive for Africa
October 3, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Sounding an alarm in a recent commentary in The Lancet, four British and American doctors say that shortages of the drug for schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease as widespread as malaria, have reached the proportions of a humanitarian crisis in Africa. Schistosomiasis has proved difficult to control for centuries; today, it kills about 300,000 people and afflicts more than 200 million yearly with chronic and severe anemia, abdominal pain, diarrhea, infertility and bladder cancer. It stunts children’s growth, affects their memory and IQ, and keeps them out of school. In women, ... Read More
List of Neglected Tropical Diseases
June 21, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
According to "The AIDS Funding Dilemma," which is featured in the July-August 2010 issue of Miller-McCune magazine, researchers point to growing evidence that this set of neglected tropical diseases may not only “threaten the health of the poor as much as HIV/ AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria, but even more importantly, may have effective treatment and prevention strategies that can be delivered for less than US $1 per capita per year.” Here is the list of neglected tropical diseases, which cites causes and symptoms: Ascariasis One of the most common human parasitic infections. Causes ... Read More
The AIDS Funding Dilemma
June 21, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
Dr. Jerome Kabakyenga has just walked a pair of visitors through a pair of vividly different Ugandan hospital laboratories — one ultramodern, the other an outdated relic. In the first, highly trained technicians investigate blood samples using a battery of high-throughput computerized systems. The brightly lit, air-conditioned facility is spotless. In the second lab on Kabakyenga's tour, there's little equipment beyond a clutter of microscopes, a pair of old refrigerators and a few centrifuges. The technicians here depend on daylight from a set of dusty windows, one of which is cracked. As ... Read More
Stopping Malaria With a Chastity Belt
March 30, 2010 • By • 5 Comments
Meddling with the sex lives of malarial mosquitoes could stop the spread of the disease. A recent study of Anopheles gambiae conducted at London’s Imperial College found that a “male mating plug” particular to these malaria-transmitting mosquitoes is the key to their reproduction — and possibly, therefore, to their control. Scientists discovered that altering the male mating plug prevents its formation. Without this plug the female mosquito cannot be properly inseminated and cannot store the sperm in her sperm storage organ, a repository she draws on for a lifetime of egg laying. ... Read More
White Nose Swings at European Bats
January 17, 2010 • By • 5 Comments
The newly identified fungus found in devastated bat colonies along the eastern United States has been confirmed in Europe — but, surprisingly, in an apparently healthy bat. During intensive monitoring last March of places bats hibernate, researchers near Perigueux, France, found a mouse-eared bat with white powdery patches on its body. A research team headed by bat expert Sébastien J. Puechmaille of University College Dublin reported in December's online Emerging Infectious Disease Journal that analysis of swabs of fungal growths from the bat's nose confirmed Geomyces destructans, the ... Read More
The Edwards Effect?
November 12, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
The 2008 tabloid revelation that presidential contender John Edwards had been caught in affair with a campaign staffer shocked many supporters who reveled in the candidate's family values shtick. This was, after all, a man routinely found at press junkets playing the model caregiver of a terminally ill wife. While Edward's begrudging disclosure of adultery marked a low in political duplicity, his affair and possible separation from his wife is — apparently — part of an all-too-common phenomenon. A new study, published in the Nov. 15 issue of the academic journal Cancer, suggests that ... Read More
Keeping More Species Around May Dilute Disease Threat
June 23, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Biodiversity provides humanity with many benefits, including clean air and water, climate stability and renewable natural resources. But a groundbreaking experimental study has shown that species diversity is good for something else: It protects people from dangerous zoonotic (animal-borne) diseases. Scientists investigating an outbreak of hantavirus among farmers in Panama's Azuero Peninsula discovered the disease was harbored in two particular rodent species that thrived in areas where tropical forest had recently been cleared for cattle pasture. In their experiment, researchers ... Read More
Rats: Just a Bunch of Homebodies
May 29, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
A study just published in the journal Molecular Ecology has found that while inner-city rodents may appear to roam far and wide, they actually stick to distinct neighborhoods for the majority of their lives. A team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health decided to take a close look at rats' movement patterns in Baltimore, in an effort to better understand how rodents transmit diseases to humans and why the city's expensive eradication efforts in the past 50 years have failed to reduce the rodent population. That meant examining wild Norway rats — also ... Read More
