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Full-Text Articles in Public Health

The Effect Of Anthropogenic Environmental Modifications On Malaria Vectors In Amazonian Peru And Brazil, Catharine Prussing Jan 2019

The Effect Of Anthropogenic Environmental Modifications On Malaria Vectors In Amazonian Peru And Brazil, Catharine Prussing

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Malaria is the most deadly vector borne disease, causing substantial morbidity and hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide each year. In the Americas, the incidence of malaria has increased steadily since 2014. The factors driving continued malaria transmission are complex and highly variable across endemic areas. These factors include inadequate access and financial commitment to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, and a failure to target interventions to heterogeneous malaria transmission patterns and vector populations. Nyssorhynchus darlingi (formerly Anopheles darlingi), the predominant malaria vector in Latin America, is known for behavioral, phenotypic, and genetic variability across its range, which allow it to …


The Effects Of Landscape On Malaria Vectors Of The Neotropics, William David Lainhart Jan 2015

The Effects Of Landscape On Malaria Vectors Of The Neotropics, William David Lainhart

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Worldwide malaria control efforts have had varying degrees of success, leaving many countries either eliminating malaria or controlling malaria. In order to maintain forward momentum toward malaria elimination, malaria-eliminating and –controlling countries require different information regarding risk factors, spatial distributions of cases and vectors, vector biology metrics, and vector population genetics. The goal of this dissertation work was to provide information that addresses the knowledge gaps preventing the creation of effective vector and malaria control programs in one malaria-eliminating country (Panama) and two malaria-controlling countries (Peru and Brazil). Case data from Panama were analyzed to assess differences in risk factors …


Mmv Malaria Box Activity Screening In Dormant Plasmodium Falciparum Phenotypes, Sandra Galusic Jan 2015

Mmv Malaria Box Activity Screening In Dormant Plasmodium Falciparum Phenotypes, Sandra Galusic

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The causative agent of malignant tertian malaria, Plasmodium falciparum undergoes an arrested growth phenotype of its erythrocytic stage when under drug-stress. Recent artemisinin treatment failures seem to be indicative of such induction followed by recrudescence rather than actual therapeutic failure. Likewise, P. vivax hypnozoites are the prototypic dormants and the latent infections for which they are responsible prove most difficult to treat. Dihydroartemisinin, an artemisinin-derivative, can be used to exploit this mechanism by inducing a dormant state in ring-stage P. falciparum parasites and in turn, their recovery may be used as a screening period for compounds that inhibit or foster …


Immunological Characterization Of Duffy Binding Protein Of Plasmodium Vivax, Miriam Thankam George Jan 2015

Immunological Characterization Of Duffy Binding Protein Of Plasmodium Vivax, Miriam Thankam George

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Plasmodium vivax Duffy binding protein (DBP) is an essential ligand for reticulocyte invasion making it a premier asexual blood stage vaccine candidate. However, strain-specific immunity due to DBPII allelic variation may complicate vaccine efficacy, suggesting that an effective DBPII vaccine needs to target immune responses to conserved epitopes that are potential targets of strain-transcending neutralizing immunity. Anti DBPII monoclonal antibodies, which were previously characterized by COS7 cell binding assay as inhibitory and non-inhibitory to DBPII-erythrocyte binding, were mapped to DBPII gene fragment libraries using phage display. Inhibitory mAb 3C9 binds to a conserved conformation-dependent epitope in subdomain 3 while non-inhibitory …


Pathogenic Mechanisms And Signaling Pathways In Plasmodium Falciparum, Jennifer L. Sedillo Mar 2014

Pathogenic Mechanisms And Signaling Pathways In Plasmodium Falciparum, Jennifer L. Sedillo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Plasmodium falciparum is a human intracellular parasite that is the causative agent of a deadly form of malaria. This species alone is responsible for 200 million cases of malaria annually resulting in over 1 million deaths worldwide. The excessive mortality due to P. falciparum infection is due to its ability to cause severe pathogenesis through hyperparasitemia and cytoadherence defined as the ability of infected red blood cells to adhere to host vasculature. Cytoadherence is mediated through the export of parasite proteins to the surface of the infected red blood cell (RBC). Exported proteins have been identified but the pathway for …


Detection And Epidemiological Patterns Of Drug Resistance Mutations In Nys Plasmodium Falciparum Clinical Malaria Specimens, Jennifer L. Conaway Jan 2012

Detection And Epidemiological Patterns Of Drug Resistance Mutations In Nys Plasmodium Falciparum Clinical Malaria Specimens, Jennifer L. Conaway

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Plasmodium falciparum is a human-infective parasite that causes the most severe form of malaria. Resistance to a wide spectrum of antimalarials has been documented in this species, and single strains may be resistant to several drugs. A new technology, pyrosequencing, has been shown to be useful for the rapid detection of SNPs involved in drug resistance. It can be used in a clinical setting and readily detects new mutants, which frequently appear in this species due to strong selection for antimalarial resistance. In this study, a pyrosequencing protocol was developed to identify mutations in the Plasmodium falciparum genes Pfcrt, Pfdhps, …