Gates foundation grant to combat malaria drug resistance

London (PTI): An international network of malaria scientists is to be established to map the emergence of resistance to anti-malarial drugs and guide global efforts to control and eradicate the disease, thanks to a £12.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN) will provide the comprehensive and rigorous evidence base needed for policy makers to select the best anti-malarial treatments and to formulate strategies to control the critical problem of resistance wherever it arises.

"With this critical mass of data, we will have powerful evidence to help inform decisions by policy makers," says Dr. Philippe Guerin, Director of WWARN and an epidemiologist in the Centre for Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford.

"It is crucial that we provide all patients with access to the right drugs at the right time."

Malaria is preventable and treatable, yet a million people die from malaria each year, most of them children.

About 2.5 billion people, or 40 per cent of the world's population, are at risk of the disease.

These people mainly live in the poorest countries of the world, those least able to provide effective controls against the disease.

Prevention of infection is one important facet of malaria control, but with no vaccine against malaria, treatment relies on anti-malarial drugs. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that the emergence of resistance to these drugs is a crucial problem, which could seriously undermine efforts to control the disease.

WWARN will integrate the efforts of researchers, NGOs and public health experts in malaria-endemic areas around the world.

Four years in planning, the initiative was born in the scientific community as malaria scientists became aware that broad collaboration was critical to achieving the long-term goal of eliminating the disease. The international collaborative effort will be administered and supported from Oxford University.

WWARN will work in close collaboration with WHO to enhance anti-malarial resistance surveillance. The tie-up will provide a platform for all malaria scientists to share results, improving the coverage, quality, and timeliness of the available data. This will give an up-to-the-minute picture of the effectiveness of anti-malarial drugs at national, regional and global levels, and enable policy makers to respond more quickly to early signs of resistance.

"We need to gather the very best intelligence to alert the malaria community to signs of resistance and mobilise our best weapons on the frontline," says Professor Carol Sibley, Scientific Director of WWARN.

While the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria has been resistant to older drugs such as chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine for some time, evidence emerging from Cambodia suggests the parasite is even developing a tolerance to artemisinin.

This recently developed drug, made from a Chinese herb, is the best line of defence against malaria and it is critical that we contain any resistance to artemisinin.

"We need readily accessible, quality assured and up-to-date information on anti-malarial drug resistance if we are to eliminate malaria. WWARN will provide this essential intelligence," says Nick J. White, Professor of Tropical Medicine at Mahidol University in Thailand and Oxford University, and Chair of the Board of WWARN.

Current guidelines stipulate that artemisinin should be given in combination with other anti-malarials to protect as much possible against the development of drug resistance.

However, this advice is being undermined by the lack of access to artemisinin combination therapies, their cost and the prevalence of poor quality drugs in many parts of the world. One recent study from South East Asia found that 195 anti-malarial drug samples out of 391 were fake.

"This situation is the best way to ensure the malaria parasite rapidly develops resistance to our best treatments," Poor quality or fake drugs expose the malaria parasite to smaller amounts of the drug which gives the parasite the opportunity to evolve ways to evade the drug," says Dr. Guerin.

Source :- Gates foundation grant to combat malaria drug resistance

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Dental clinics to act as counselling centres for tobacco users

New Delhi (PTI): Addicted to tobacco? A visit to a nearby dental clinic might soon help you ease out your dependence on nicotine.

As part of an anti-tobacco initiative by the Indian Dental Association (IDA) at least 5,000 dental clinics across India will be enabled to double up as counselling and intervention centres for those hooked to tobacco.

The initiative has been launched so as to catch patients at the right time and pursue a "scientific approach" to help them get rid of their addiction, the IDA said.

"For the past 30 years we have seen loads of money invested into awareness campaigns not yielding results, and the habit of tobacco consumption has gone up 60 per cent in the last decade itself," said IDA Secretary General Dr Ashoke Dhoble.

"As telling people about health hazards associated with tobacco has not helped, we have decided to address the difficulty faced by people in quitting consumption," he said.

As part of the programme, applications have been invited from volunteering dentists to spot such cases and act as interventionists.

"Dentists are the first people tobacco addicts approach seeking help for addressing foul mouth smell and discolouring of teeth. So we thought they could act as interventionists and work at the pre-addiction stage," Dhoble told PTI.

The dental association will be launching 5,000 (Tobacco Intervention Initiative CentresTIIC) across the country in the next two years. Fifty-six TIICs were set up across Maharashtra this week.

The programme will require voluntary dentists to clear an online exam to test whether they have sound knowledge of the problem before giving them certificates to operate intervention centres and on clearing the exam they will receive an orientation at NIMHANS, Bangalore on how to go about the process.

"The dentists, besides touching on the issues of cancer and heart problems for tobacco consumers, will focus on counselling them to end their addiction," Dhoble said.

The members of the initiative will be allowed access to a central website, where they can register their observations, compile data and seek help from experiences of other members.

Source :- Dental clinics to act as counselling centres for tobacco users

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Anemia linked with higher death risk in heart patients

Washington (IANS) :- The presence of anaemia in patients with chronic heart failure is linked to a significantly higher risk of death.

Heart failure is a common and serious chronic illness. A large number of patients with heart failure also have anaemia, which is most likely a complication from poor heart function.

The aim of this study was to assess the impact of anaemia on the clinical outcomes of chronic heart failure (CHF) by a meta-analysis and systemic review of published literature.

A total of 97,699 patients with CHF were identified from the published studies. From a collective analysis, researchers found that when anaemia occurs, it worsens patient prognosis, making them more likely to be hospitalized or die from heart failure.

“Health professionals may need to improve current practices to better treat anaemia in patients with chronic heart failure” said Lexin Wang, study co-author and head of the cardiovascular group at Charles Sturt University (CSU), in Australia.

Even with contemporary medical treatment, the mortality rate from CHF is still high, reaching 40 percent in very sick patients, said a CSU release.

Given the clear association between anaemia, mortality rate and hospitalization rate, optimal treatment of anaemia, on top of other heart-failure-specific therapies, may reduce the rate of mortality and further improve patient's prognosis.

These findings will appear in Congestive Heart Failure journal.

Source :- Anemia linked with higher death risk in heart patients

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