Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0024530 (malaria)
 44,886 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

This study was undertaken to determine the prevalence of transfusion transmitted diseases (TTDs) among local blood donors, the safety offered by the four mandatory tests (for HIV, HBsAg, syphilis and malaria) and to assess alanine aminotransferase (ALT) as a surrogate test. A total of 313 blood donors were tested for HBsAg, hepatitis B core (HBc) antibody, hepatitis C (HCV) antibody, HIV antibody, and IgM antibody to cytomegalovirus (CMV-IgM). The serum alanine aminotransferase levels were also done on each unit of blood. The prevalence of various markers was 7(2.2%) for HBsAg, 57 (18.2%) for anti HBc (total), 1 (0.3%) for anti HCV, 16 (5.1%) for anti CMV. None of the donors were positive for HIV, VDRL or malaria. ALT level was raised in 16.5 per cent of donors and showed no correlation with hepatitis markers. ALT was not found to be useful as a surrogate marker for routine screening of donors. Sensitive tests like ELISA and immunofluoresence for malaria antigen should be applied for screening for malaria. VDRL test may be used to detect high risk donors rather than detection of syphilis when stored blood is used. HBsAg and HIV tests should be routinely done on every unit of blood and anti HCV tests should be done regularly, if possible.
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PMID:Effectiveness of mandatory transmissible diseases screening in Indian blood donors. 767 31

Just over a year ago, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued the final bloodborne pathogens standard, "Occupational Exposure to Bloodborne Pathogens; Final Rule," which requires healthcare institutions to protect their employees from all occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens." According to OSHA, the only criterion for applying the standard is the likelihood of exposure to blood and other potentially infectious materials (OPIMs). Thus, the standard is designed to protect all vulnerable personnel, from the clinical engineers who service contaminated equipment to the staff in clinical laboratories, patient care or treatment areas, and housekeeping and laundry services--any location where the nature of the work poses the risk of exposure to bloodborne pathogens. All department heads and employees must have access to the standard and should carefully review our analysis of the regulations and recommendations for implementing them, as presented in this special issue of Health Devices. The standard is aimed at protecting employees from occupational exposure to all bloodborne pathogens and, especially, to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the hepatitis B virus (HBV)--the most infamous pathogens transmitted through occupational exposure to blood and body fluids. Other bloodborne diseases referenced by OSHA in the preamble to the standard include arboviral infections, babesiosis, brucellosis, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, hepatitis C, human T-lymphotropic virus type I, leptospirosis, malaria, relapsing fever, syphilis, and viral hemorrhagic fever. In this issue, we provide a clinical overview of HIV and HBV and the diseases they cause, as well as a brief discussion of other bloodborne pathogens; an analysis of the most significant regulations affecting hospitals; and our recommendations for compliance. The recommendations presented in this article do not exhaust the possibilities for reducing exposure and complying with the standard. We invite you to communicate your ideas and practices regarding compliance issues to the ECRI-sponsored Center for Healthcare Environmental Management (CHEM) for possible inclusion in a future update to its loose-leaf reference publication, the Healthcare Environmental Management System. We wish to acknowledge CHEM's contribution in developing this special report, which was reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and OSHA. Also see "CDC's Recommendations for Hepatitis B Vaccination and Postexposure Follow-up" and "A Minimal Training Syllabus" in this issue.
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PMID:OSHA's bloodborne pathogens standard: analysis and recommendations. 844 29

At present, treatment of HIV infection uses small inhibitory molecules that target HIV protease; however, the emergence of resistant HIV strains is increasingly problematic. To circumvent this, we report here a new 'Trojan horse' strategy to kill HIV-infected cells by exploiting HIV protease. We engineered a transducing, modified, apoptosis-promoting caspase-3 protein, TAT-Casp3, that substitutes HIV proteolytic cleavage sites for endogenous ones and efficiently transduces about 100% of cells, but remains inactive in uninfected cells. In HIV-infected cells, TAT-Casp3 becomes processed into an active form by HIV protease, resulting in apoptosis of the infected cell. This strategy could also be applied to other pathogens encoding specific proteases, such as hepatitis C virus, cytomegalovirus and malaria.
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PMID:Killing HIV-infected cells by transduction with an HIV protease-activated caspase-3 protein. 988 35

According to the World Health Organization, 585,000 women die each year from a pregnancy-related cause, 99% of whom are from developing countries. The first International Conference on Safe Motherhood in 1987 sensitized the world community to this drama. Ever since, maternal mortality and its medical causes are better known. The maternal mortality ratio is highest in West Africa (1,020 maternal deaths per 100,000 live borns) when it is 27/100,000 in industrialized countries. Direct obstetric causes account for 80% of the deaths: hemorrhage, infection, dystocia, hypertension and abortion. Indirect causes are essentially anemia, malaria, hepatitis C and AIDS. Severe maternal morbidity is 6 to 10 times more frequent than maternal mortality but it also leads to handicaps which end up often in women's social rejection. However, WHO estimates that 95% of these deaths and handicaps are avoidable, and at a low cost.
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PMID:[Pregnancy and delivery in western Africa. High risk motherhood]. 1050 33

Oman is generally hot and dry, but the Salalah region in southern Dhofar province is relatively cool and rainy during the summer monsoon, and has a distinctive pattern of infection. Important, notifiable infections in Oman include tuberculosis, brucellosis (endemic in Dhofar), acute gastroenteritis, and viral hepatitis: 4.9% of the adults are seropositive for hepatitis B surface antigen and approximately 1.2% for hepatitis C virus. Infection with human immunodeficiency virus is uncommon, and leprosy, rabies, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever are rare. Between 1990 and 1998, the incidence of malaria, (>70% due to Plasmodium falciparum) decreased from 32,700 to 882 cases. Cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis (caused by Leishmania tropica and L. infantum, respectively) and Bancroftian filariasis occur sporadically. Intestinal parasitism ranges from 17% to 42% in different populations. A solitary focus of schistosomiasis mansoni in Dhofar has been eradicated. There are major programs for the elimination of tuberculosis, leprosy, and malaria, and to control brucellosis, leishmaniasis, sexually transmitted diseases, trachoma, acute respiratory infection in children, and diarrheal diseases. The Expanded Program on Immunization was introduced in 1981: diphtheria, neonatal tetanus, and probably poliomyelitis have been eliminated.
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PMID:Infectious and tropical diseases in Oman: a review. 1067 71

Iron is essential for both human and microbial metabolism, and it is therefore important that iron status is maintained at a level that permits optimal immune responses by the host but does not facilitate availability of iron to microorganisms. This paper reviews the role of iron in resistance to infection, with particular reference to malaria and hepatitis C, and discusses the desirability of iron supplementation of populations at risk of infection.
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PMID:Benefits and dangers of iron during infection. 1067 81

Recently introduced rapid nonmicroscopic immunocapture assays for the diagnosis of malaria infection are being evaluated for their sensitivity and specificity in various epidemiological settings. A Plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein 2 (PfHRP-2)-based assay (ICT) and a Plasmodium-specific lactate dehydrogenase test (OptiMAL) were evaluated for their specificities in different groups of patients who tested negative for malaria infection by microscopy. The patients were selected from different disease groups: rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis C, toxoplasmosis, schistosomiasis, and hydatid disease. One hundred thirty-three of the 225 patients were positive for rheumatoid factor. Thirty-five of the 133 (26%) rheumatoid factor-positive patients gave a false-positive reaction with the ICT assay, but only 4 of these gave false-positive reactions with the OptiMAL test. Thirty-three of the 35 false-positive specimens became negative when repeat tested with the ICT assay after absorbing out the rheumatoid factor activity. Our study shows that the PfHRP-2-based ICT assay gave a false-positive reaction in 26% of the patients who had rheumatoid factors, but were negative for malaria by microscopy.
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PMID:Plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein 2-based immunocapture diagnostic assay for malaria: cross-reactivity with rheumatoid factors. 1069 18

Hepatitis B and C are, and will remain for some time, major health problems in Egypt and the entire continent of Africa. Both infections can lead to an acute or silent course of liver disease, progressing from liver impairment to cirrhosis and decompensated liver failure or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in a 20-30 year period. In addition, hepatitis B and C infection rates differ in different settings, and prognosis may be worse in conjunction with schistosomiasis in Egypt, malaria in Sudan and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in other African populations. Unlike hepatitis B virus (HBV), for which the prospects for controlling the spread of infection by vaccination are promising, prospects for development of an effective vaccine against hepatitis C virus (HCV) are limited. As well as screening of blood for transfusion and using sterile needles for injection, preventive measures should be undertaken to reduce the risk of contact (often described as community-acquired infection). Until more is known about the unidentified routes of transmission in tropical and subtropical settings it will be difficult to be specific about the kind of measures which may be effective. Success may largely depend on changing habits within the population. Prevention should be the main goal of current efforts until low-cost, effective therapies become available.
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PMID:Prevalence of hepatitis B and C in Egypt and Africa. 1072 51

The current web summary highlights internet sites describing the growing problem of Staphylococcus aureus antibiotic resistance, the epidemiology and prevention of malaria, biochemical and genetic aspects of lipopolysaccharide action, and the history and treatment of hepatitis C infections.
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PMID:'Infectious web'. 1081 47

The risk of transmission of infectious agents by blood transfusion is a permanent preoccupation for diseases that we do not know how to cure, such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and AIDS. However, few studies have been carried out concerning the risks of transmitting curable infectious diseases, such as malaria. We carried out a cross-sectional study of 355 healthy blood donors in the rainy season, in which we used thick and thin blood film smears to screen for malaria. We found that 33.5% of donors harbored trophozoites and were therefore capable of transmitting malaria via blood donation. There were 1,000 to 4,760 parasites per microliter of blood and there was no relationship between the load of parasitized red blood cells and clinical malaria. Plasmodium falciparum was the most common species identified (96.63% of cases). The results confirm that it is vital, in this age of resistance to anti-malaria drugs and HIV, to screen blood donations systematically. Patients receiving transfusions should be given anti-malaria treatment and donors should be encouraged to sleep under treated mosquito nets.
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PMID:[The risk of malaria transmission by blood transfusion at Cotonou, Benin]. 1122 34


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