Welcome to Nina, Riley, and Josh’s Blog. Enjoy.
Our blog is dedicated to tracking our progress as we participate in a grid computing research project that searches for answers to the devastating disease called Malaria. To begin, grid computing is a relatively new and drastically increasing field, which uses the processing power of numerous volunteered computers throughout the world all in search of answers for various things. Grid computing can be used for a variety of thing such as protein folding, mathematical equations, and even searching for extraterrestrial beings. The focus of this blog however will be on Malaria.
Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite called different species of Plasmodium. It is commonly transmitted by mosquitoes. Malaria is a serious and sometimes fatal disease, but illness can usually be prevented. Malaria is prominent in central and west Africa, India, and parts of South America. It occurs in some parts of Central America and Southeast Asia.
The first symptom in malaria cases is the presence of a fever. Doctors should always find out where a patient has traveled to if a fever is present. If the patient has traveled to an area with a risk of malaria, then malarial diagnostic measures should be taken.
The clinical diagnosis includes physical symptoms including fever, chills, sweats, headaches, muscle pains, nausea and vomiting. These symptoms are not unique to malaria though. In sever malaria though symptoms can include confusion, coma, neurological focal signs, severe anemia, and respiratory difficulties. Since these symptoms can be confused with other illnesses, clinical findings should always be confirmed by a laboratory test.
These laboratory tests include microscopic, antigen, molecular, serology, and drug resistance tests. For microscopic, the patients blood is examined under a microscope and malaria parasites are identified. Antigens derived from malaria parasites can also be identified in the blood using a dipstick or cassette format. In a molecular diagnosis, the parasite nucleic acids are detected using polymerase chain reactions (PCR). Serology is used to find antibodies in the patients system against malaria.
A quick diagnosis and treatment are vital in malaria cases. Most patients can take oral medications but in severe cases or for patients who can’t take oral medications, an IV infusion is needed. Some of the drugs used to attack the parasite in the blood are chloroquine, mefloquine, Malarone, Coartem, quinine, doxycycline, and clindamycin. Primaquines work to fight against the dormant parasite liver forms called hypnozoites. This helps prevent relapses of malaria.
Some things to consider before treating a patient for malaria are the type of the malaria parasite, the area where the infection was contracted, the drug-resistance status of the parasite species, the clinical status of the patient, any accompanying illnesses, if the patient is pregnant, or if the patient has any drug allergies.
FROM OUR GRID ------ Malaria: "We are part of a collaborative project headed by Austin Burt at Imperial College in London that is one of the Gates Foundation "Grand Challenge Projects in Global Health". Malaria is caused by a parasite that spends part of its life cycle inside the mosquito, and is passed along to humans by mosquito bites. The idea behind the project is to make mosquitoes resistant to the parasite by eliminating genes required in the mosquito for the parasite to live. Our part of the project is to use our computer based design methods (ROSETTA) to engineer new enzymes that will specifically target and inactivate these genes."
-http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/
-http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/
You Tube Videos:
Malaria Informational Video:
Malaria Song:
Malaria Information:
Our Grid:
