Public Health, Prevention Strategies and Vaccines
The food vacuole is the specialized compartment that degrades hemoglobin during the asexual erythrocytic stage of the parasite. It is implied that effective drug treatments can be developed by targeting the proteolytic enzymes of the food vacuole. In a paper published in 1997, Westling et al. focused their attention on the aspartic endopeptidase class of enzymes, simply called plasmepsins. They sought to characterize the specificity for the enzymes cloned from P. vivax and P. malariae. Using substrate specificity studies and inhibitor analysis, it was found that the plasmepsins for P. malariae and P. vivax showed less specificity than that for P. falciparum. Unfortunately, this means that the development of a selective inhibitor for P. malariae may prove more challenging than the development of one for P. falciparum. Another study by Bruce et al. presented evidence that there may be regular genetic exchange within P. malariae populations. Six polymorphic genetic markers from P. malariae were isolated and analyzed in 70 samples of naturally acquired P. malariae infections from different parts of the world. The data showed a high level of multi-genotypic carriage in humans.
Both of these experiments illustrate that development of vaccine options will prove challenging, if not impossible. Dr. William Collins doubts that anyone is currently looking for possible vaccines for P. malariae and given the complexity of the parasite it can be inferred why. He states that very few studies are conducted with this parasite, perhaps as a result of its perceived low morbidity and prevalence. Collins sights the great restrictions of studies with chimpanzees and monkeys as a sizeable barrier. Since the Plasmodium brasilianium parasite that infects South American monkeys is thought to be an adapted form of P. malariae, more research with P. brasilianium may hold valuable insight into P. malariae.
The continuing work with the plasmepsin associated with P. malariae, plasmepsin 4, by Professor Ben Dunn and his research team from the University of Florida may provide hope for long term malaria control in the near future.
Read more about this topic: Plasmodium Malariae
Famous quotes containing the words public, prevention and/or strategies:
“Hast ever ben in Omaha
Where rolls the dark Missouri down,
Where four strong horses scarce can draw
An empty wagon through the town?
Where sand is blown from every mound
To fill your eyes and ears and throat;
Where all the steamboats are aground,
And all the houses are afloat?...
If not, take heed to what I say,
You’ll find it just as I have found it;
And if it lies upon your way
For God’s sake, reader, go around it!”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels’ wives.”
—Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940)