Good news for folks is bad news for mozzies!

Feb 8 2009

Australian scientists have good news for folks but bad news for 'mozzies' with the discovery a possible new treatment for malaria.

The scientists say their discovery could lead to new and more effective drugs, which is excellent news, as malaria is one of the world's biggest killers and millions of people, mainly in under-developed countries are infected.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) each year, more than a million die, many of them children under the age of five and every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria - in 2006 alone there were 247 million cases of malaria which caused about 880,000 deaths, mostly African children.

Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes and is both preventable and curable yet approximately half of the world's population remains at risk of malaria.

Experts increasingly fear that the disease is becoming resistant to the available drug treatments and the Australian team from Monash University say their discovery could lead to new and more effective drugs.

Malaria passes from one person to another through infected mosquitoes and once it is in the body, it multiplies in the liver, and invades red blood cells - this causes fever, headache, chills and vomiting – usually 10 to 15 days after a person is infected, and if not treated it can disrupt the blood supply to vital organs and can even cause death.

According to Professor James Whisstock the most effective way of killing the malaria parasite may be to starve it, because as with any other organism or parasite it needs a food source and malaria's food source is blood.

The malaria parasite is able to break down blood proteins which it needs to thrive and reproduce and Professor Whisstock it is the final stage of that digestive process which is the target.

A team of researchers from several Australian Universities, led by Professor Whisstock hope that this discovery may lead to new treatment options and overcome the drug resistance and prove to be a more effective approach.

Professor Whisstock says there is a growing reservoir of drug resistant malaria and different weapons are required - as there are several different strains of malaria, the team hopes to develop drugs that will treat them all, which are both cheap and effective.

The research was conducted in collaboration with Professor John Dalton at the University of Technology, Sydney, and researchers at Monash University ARC Centre of Excellence in Structural and Functional Microbial Genomics.

The team have managed to deactivate the final stage of the malaria parasite's digestive machinery, effectively starving the parasite and causing it to die.

The researchers used the Australian Synchrotron at Monash University's Clayton campus and lead author of the research paper, Dr Sheena McGowan, from the Monash University National Health and Medical Research Council, says their findings prove their concept that malaria could be starved chemically.

Dr McGowan says a single bite from an infected mosquito can transfer the malaria parasite into the human blood stream, then the malaria parasite uses an enzyme to break down blood proteins for the nutrients inside a specialised compartment called the digestive vacuole.

Dr McGowan says the enzyme PfA-M1 is essential for parasite viability, is easier to target from a drug perspective and a new drug candidate would mean a single dose cure.

The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.