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| A Faster Way to Find the Origin of Malaria | A Faster Way to Find the Origin of Malaria |
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| By using a DNA “bar code” of 23 short snips from the genes of parasites that cause malaria, scientists can now often quickly determine where they originated, British researchers report. | By using a DNA “bar code” of 23 short snips from the genes of parasites that cause malaria, scientists can now often quickly determine where they originated, British researchers report. |
| The information could be useful in fighting local outbreaks, which may be caused by parasites from other parts of the world. And it should be possible to make a test kit that will get that information from a spot of dried blood in two hours — far less time than is needed to sequence a whole genome. | The information could be useful in fighting local outbreaks, which may be caused by parasites from other parts of the world. And it should be possible to make a test kit that will get that information from a spot of dried blood in two hours — far less time than is needed to sequence a whole genome. |
| For the study, published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analyzed the DNA of more than 700 malaria-causing parasites from all over the world. | For the study, published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analyzed the DNA of more than 700 malaria-causing parasites from all over the world. |
| For Plasmodium falciparum — the most dangerous species — they found 23 consistent mutations that let them tell, with 92 percent accuracy, whether a strain was from West Africa, East Africa, Southeast Asia, South America or the South Pacific. They still hope to find markers that distinguish strains from Central America, the Caribbean, southern Africa and the Indian subcontinent. | For Plasmodium falciparum — the most dangerous species — they found 23 consistent mutations that let them tell, with 92 percent accuracy, whether a strain was from West Africa, East Africa, Southeast Asia, South America or the South Pacific. They still hope to find markers that distinguish strains from Central America, the Caribbean, southern Africa and the Indian subcontinent. |
| Even in places where malaria has been wiped out, an outbreak can start when a traveler is infected in a foreign country and then returns home and is stung by a mosquito — which can in turn spread the parasite to others. | Even in places where malaria has been wiped out, an outbreak can start when a traveler is infected in a foreign country and then returns home and is stung by a mosquito — which can in turn spread the parasite to others. |
| Dr. Michelle Hsiang, a malaria researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, said that in central China, for example, there had been separate outbreaks among overseas laborers and others who had returned from Africa and Southeast Asia, and doctors feared those would seed local outbreaks. Knowing a strain’s origins can indicate who should be tested first and can alert doctors to a possible drug-resistant strain; that problem is now widespread only in Southeast Asia. | |
| Many research teams, including Dr. Hsiang’s, are working on variations of the London team’s work, with some hoping to tell what country a case came from, or even what island. | Many research teams, including Dr. Hsiang’s, are working on variations of the London team’s work, with some hoping to tell what country a case came from, or even what island. |