From the University of Cape Town comes some bad news for global warming alarmists, Malaria deaths may soon be a thing of the past and their attempts to link such deaths to global warming will evaporate if this cure holds up in clinical trials. Of course it never did anyway: Another alarming climate myth bites the dust – mosquito borne malaria does NOT increase with temperature
So if this is a real cure, no more cushy grants for Michael Mann to study Malaria and AGW then, see Mann’s 1.8 million Malaria grant – ‘where do we ask for a refund’? The most amazing part is the research is only 18 months old….so I expect it will be given an even more rigorous clinical review. (h/t to WUWT reader Jason) – Anthony
African research identifies strong candidate for possible single-dose malaria cure
28 August 2012
A compound discovered by a UCT drug discovery programme has been selected by MMV for its potent activity against multiple points in parasite’s lifecycle
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| Big news: Prof Kelly Chibale (centre), here with Minister Naledi Pandor, speaks about the compound MMV390048 that he and international collaborators hope will lead to the development of a single-dose treatment for malaria. | Panel report: Dr Tim Wells, Prof Kelly Chibale, Minister Naledi Pandor, Dr Max Price and Dr Richard Gordon of the Technology Innovation Agency address the media at a press conference where they announced the development of the new compound. |
A recently discovered compound – named MMV390048 – from the aminopyridine class not only has the potential to become part of a single-dose cure for all strains of malaria, but might also be able to block transmission of the parasite from person to person, according to a research collaboration involving the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), based in Switzerland, and the Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3-D) at UCT.
This was announced at UCT today.
On the basis of initial results it was selected by MMV for further development – making it the first compound researched on African soil to enter preclinical development in partnership with MMV.
An African solution to save lives
Naledi Pandor, the Minister of Science & Technology, said: “This is a significant victory in the battle to alleviate the burden of disease in the subcontinent. Clearly the war on this disease is not yet won, but I am excited by the role that our excellent scientists have played in this milestone in finding a potential cure for malaria and possibly preventing its transmission. Congratulations to Professor Kelly Chibale and all involved. This is evidence of the world-class science being done in South Africa and the continent, and of the power of continental and international scientific collaboration in the multidisciplinary approaches that are essential in addressing the societal challenges of our time.”
Dr Max Price, the vice-chancellor of UCT, said: “H3-D was founded at UCT in 2010 for this very purpose: to develop African expertise towards solving the health problems that beset the developing world. We trust this clinical candidate is the first of many contributions Professor Chibale and his team will be making to the advancement of international medicine.”
H3-D identified a molecule, code named MMV390048, which was selected in July 2012 by MMV’s Expert Scientific Advisory Committee for further development. The promising new compound shows potent activity against multiple points in the malaria parasite’s lifecycle. This means it not only has the potential to become part of a single-dose cure for malaria but might also be able to block transmission of the parasite from person to person.
The aminopyridine series was initially identified by Griffith University scientists in Australia as part of MMV’s extensive malaria screening campaign of around 6 million compounds. A team of scientists from H3-D, led by UCT Professor Kelly Chibale, further scrutinised and explored the antimalarial potential of the series. With parasitological, pharmacological and contract chemistry support from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Switzerland), the Centre for Drug Candidate Optimization at Monash University (Australia) and Syngene (India) respectively, the H3-D team selected the most promising compounds from the series to be optimised and retested.
In just 18 months the team had identified and developed a candidate suitable for preclinical development.
Equipping the next generation of African scientists
“We are very excited that this promising compound, researched by African scientists, has been selected by MMV for further development,” said Chibale, the founder and director of H3-D. “This is truly a proud day for African science and African scientists. Our team is hopeful that the compound will emerge from rigorous testing as an extremely effective medicine for malaria – a disease that accounts for 24% of total child deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. What is more, H3-D and MMV achieved MMV390048 as a clinical candidate in record time. In the process we have developed a unique model for successful technology platforms, and generic modern pharmaceutical industry expertise and skills, to discover drugs in potentially any disease area in Africa.”
Dr Tim Wells, MMV’s Chief Scientific Officer, said: “This is a great achievement and an excellent example of the quality of research that can be fostered in Africa. We look forward to seeing more exciting compounds emerge from Kelly’s team and are proud to be collaborating with H3-D; not only is it conducting excellent science today, but it is also providing world-class training for the next generation of African scientists.”
What is so unique and exciting about MMV390048
- It is very potent: it displayed a complete cure of animals infected with malaria parasites in a single dose given orally, and thus has the potential to cure millions of people.
- It is active against a wide panel of resistant strains of the malaria parasite.
- Developing the drug has made possible the training of more than 10 local scientists and cemented a strong relationship with an international partner.
- The clinical candidate is in line to enter clinical trials in late 2013.
View a video of Prof Kelly Chibale speaking about H3-D.
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This is a wonderful thread. Hopeful news regarding malaria, plus an opportunity for warmist trolls and thread-jackers to come here and parade their ignorance and inability to admit when they’re wrong. One of them even quoted Wankerpedia! The benefits go on and on.
Malaria was an important issue to connect with AGW. If successfully linked to warming then deaths due to malaria could be directly attributed to AGW. It is vital this counter, begins ticking up, long promised (predicted) fatalities or people will begin to wonder… what the big deal, with warming actually is?
It is exactly, the same reason and motivation, behind the attempt, to link hurricanes and droughts, with AGW. The body count must start. Arctic ice dips certainly will not do it. The agenda will sorely miss the malaria opportunity. GK
TomT says:
August 30, 2012 at 11:20 am
And what if those cold regions become more temperate?
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Sure, if a cold place warms and the population increases by a factor of 10, you will get 10 times as much Malaria. And 10 times as much flu, colds, hiv, etc, etc.,
A cold climate prevents disease by driving people elsewhere. There is virtually no disease at the poles, while disease is very common at the equator. Given how disease free the poles are, why don’t more people live there?
“A total of 1,803 persons died of malaria in the western parts of Finland and in the south-western archipelago during the years 1751–1773
============
That must have been the years Finland invented windows and central heating.
Infected people cause Malaria. Mosquitoes are blamed, but without infected people nearby, there is no risk of malaria. A one treatment cure for Malaria would be HUGE.
The problem is that Malaria is hard to cure, so it is hard to eradicate from areas where medical facilities are less than world class. These are the poor countries of the earth, which are mostly the tropical countries, where the warm climate makes poverty survivable. Temperate climates kill the poor, which tends to restrict these areas to the wealthy of the world, who have the resources to cure Malaria in their own peoples..
Steve Jones says:
August 30, 2012 at 11:20 am
Let’s not bother then, is that what you are saying?
==========================================
No, it’s you who said that.
What I’m saying is that they’re getting a bit overexcited about it. They haven’t won yet.
DDT was thought to be the ultimate weapon against malaria. Today, great deal of mosquito population is still resistant to DDT even after many years since it was last used against them.
Wonderful news. My Dad got Malaria in Korea during the war (note – not exactly a tropical location) and it dogged him for decades afterwards. Being a healthy young man with access to medical care, it didn’t kill him. Babies, children, the sick and the elderly are the ones who die most often in poor countries today.
Oh, and Tom T, I guess you have never seen the summer mosquito plagues in the high latitudes. Those suckers are enormous and come in swarms of thousands. It is not at all difficult to comprehend how malaria can be a major problem in these environments.
Kasuha: your
DDT was thought to be the ultimate weapon against malaria. Today, great deal of mosquito population is still resistant to DDT even after many years since it was last used against them.
This is wrong. The WHO (not the band, BTW), EDF and the Sierra Club all agree that DDT should be used to fight the insect vector. The WHO statement on Indoor Residual Spraying states explicitly that DDT is the most effective pesticide treatment.
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2011/WHO_HTM_GMP_2011_eng.pdf
DDT is still the most effective and cheapest form of vector control.
When writing about methods used to eradicate malaria, don’t overlook oiling of ponds and swamps. Application of a thin film of light oil on still bodies of water suffocates mosquito larvae. (I’m old enough that this was still common practice when I was a lad.)
Wikipedia mentions the practice in the article about DDT, just below the heading “Non-chemical vector control”:
Before DDT, malaria was successfully eradicated or curtailed in several tropical areas by removing or poisoning mosquito breeding grounds and larva habitats, for example by filling or applying oil to standing water.
The link is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
May I ask some stupid questions? If humanity got close to eradicating the anopheles mosquito, would it then be declared an endangered species? I want to save the polar bears but am I a hypocrite? What did I do to save the smallpox virus from extinction? Who said that humans are the sole arbiters of which life forms are allowed to survive?
Wiki says that malaria comes in five flavors. All five can cross the species barrier from the higher apes to humans. The malaria parasite needs two hosts: the female anopheles mosquito, and a human or ape. Herd immunity seems to be the answer.
Colonial said:
When writing about methods used to eradicate malaria, don’t overlook oiling of ponds and swamps. Application of a thin film of light oil on still bodies of water suffocates mosquito larvae. (I’m old enough that this was still common practice when I was a lad.)
——————————————-
Yep, I remember this being used in household rainwater tanks in the country when I was growing up – not for malaria (we didn’t have it) but just to control mosquitoes generally around the house. Kerosine was the oil of choice. It is 100% effective in a still, controlled environment such as a water tank, but I’m not sure how practical it is out in the open.
@davidmhoffer – If you have good statistics for deaths from extreme cold vs extreme heat, bring them on.
@Smokey – glad your focused on the important stuff. Now where are those Mann quotes on how happy he is about malaria deaths and declining sea ice? Where are the model, evidence, and error bars on the ‘natural cycle’ of Arctic sea ice that has previously opened the Northeast Passage to shipping?
@davidmhoffer – according to this idea that water cools more than ice, every square meter of open water, in every year, should have iced over again immediately and become colder than the ice next to it. Do you have a reference to a paper that explains this process? It would seem to be eminently testable and verifiable. And since the ice has been melting back further and further for 33 years, some even more powerful force must be to blame. What is that force?
dvunk: I have some excellent papers on cold and warm related mortality.
Oddly, the vast consensus is that cold events increase mortality, during and after the event.
Warm events only displaces mortality. That is, during the warm event, mortality goes up. After, the rate falls. Over the entire period, the mortality rate is about the same as prior to the warm event.
As an example, it is estimated that 25,000 to 35,000 die per year due to cold events and energy poverty, in the UK alone.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/298533.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3226897.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8442413.stm
These authors found, with adaptation, that warming in the warmest part of the year yielded an increase in mortality of 0.7 deaths per million, while warming in the coldest part of the year saw a decrease in mortality of 85 per million, for a lives saved to lives lost ratio of 121.4.
That is, 121.4 more lives are saved by warming, than taken by warming.
Christidis, N., Donaldson, G.C. and Stott, P.A. 2010. Causes for the recent changes in cold- and heat-related mortality in England and Wales. Climatic Change 102: 539-553.
These researchers say their results:
“”point to widely different impacts of cold and hot temperatures on mortality.””
“”hot temperature shocks are indeed associated with a large and immediate spike in mortality in the days of the heat wave,””
“”almost all of this excess mortality is explained by near-term displacement,””
“”in the weeks that follow a heat wave, we find a marked decline in mortality hazard, which completely offsets the increase during the days of the heat wave,””
“”there is virtually no lasting impact of heat waves on mortality.””
My emphasis.
In the cold, they found:
“”an immediate spike in mortality in the days of the cold wave,””
“”there is no offsetting decline in the weeks that follow,””
“”the cumulative effect of one day of extreme cold temperature during a thirty-day window is an increase in daily mortality by as much as 10%.””
“”this impact of cold weather on mortality is significantly larger for females than for males,””
“”for both genders, the effect is mostly attributable to increased mortality due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.””
Further:
“”the aggregate magnitude of the impact of extreme cold on mortality in the United States is large,””
“”roughly corresponds to 0.8% of average annual deaths in the United States during the sample period.””
“”the average person who died because of cold temperature exposure lost in excess of ten years of potential life…””
While heat related fatalities lost a few days or week of potential life.
Further:
“”each year 4,600 deaths are delayed by the changing exposure to cold temperature due to mobility,””
“”3% to 7% of the gains in longevity experienced by the U.S. population over the past three decades are due to the secular movement toward warmer states in the West and the South, away from the colder states in the North.””
Reference
Deschenes, O. and Moretti, E. 2009. Extreme weather events, mortality, and migration. The Review of Economics and Statistics 91:659-681.”
I have 20 more, all in the same vein. Cold kills, warmth displaces mortality.
From the authors:
Our data suggest that any increases in mortality due to increased temperatures would be outweighed by much larger short term declines in cold related mortalities,
Annual heat related mortality was no greater in hot than in cold regions
Numbers of heat related deaths were always much smaller than cold related deaths
http://www.bmj.com/content/321/7262/670.full
These authors find that cold kills, warm does not:
“”with these analyses, we confirmed the results of other studies (Donaldson et al., 1998; Gyllerup, 2000; Mercer, 2003) that mortality was in inverse relation to air temperature.””
Toro, K., Bartholy, J., Pongracz, R., Kis, Z., Keller, E. and Dunay, G. 2010. Evaluation of meteorological factors on sudden cardiovascular death. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine 17: 236-242.
and these
Davis, R.E., P.C. Knappenberger, P.J. Michaels, and W.M. Novicoff, 2003. Changing heat-related mortality in the United States. Environmental Health Perspectives, 111, 1712–1718.
Kyselý, J., and E. Plavocá, 2012. Declining impacts of hot spells on mortality in the Czech Republic, 1986-2009: adaptation to climate change? Climatic Change, doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0358-4
I have more, dvunk. Let me know when you get through this bunch.
Re Les Johnson: TomT: I see that you do not acknowledge your error in claiming that there are only “outbreaks” in high latitudes, and malaria does not become endemic in these regions.”
Les Johnson, there is a spectrum of endemicity, with holoendemic one extreme. Malaria in high latitudes was marked by outbreaks, which implies a lack of immunity in the population. That is, not holoendemic. I also commented on “indoor malaria” above, during the critical transmission stage of the parasite in the mosquito, the insect is indoors.
Now, when is Anthony going to acknowledge his vital error on his thread on temperature and mosquito transmission of the malaria parasite; namely, that the experiment was performed with Plasmodium yoelii, an inappropriate model system? Does he admit to error?
The decision to discontinue DDT use against malaria in the late 1960s was based upon many factors, and not just concern for the possible detrimental health effects of DDT. For instance, DDT was not working effectively, and mosquitoes were becoming resistant. WHO, Gates Foundation, etc, is now considering DDT, as well as other insecticides.
The meme that Rachel Carson has blood on her hands is a recent invention, and should be approached with great caution.
Johanna, re: ‘Oh, and Tom T, I guess you have never seen the summer mosquito plagues in the high latitudes. Those suckers are enormous and come in swarms of thousands. It is not at all difficult to comprehend how malaria can be a major problem in these environments.”
Johanna, yes, mosquitoes in the high latitudes number in the billions. But, the parasite needs to complete the mosquito stage of its lifecycle (ie. gametocyte>gamete>ookinete>oocyst>sporozoite>salivary gland sporozoite) within the period of time of the first and second mosquito blood meals, and this is temperature dependent. This restricts the ability of the parasite to transmit at higher latitudes, hence, “indoor malaria” transmission.
TomT: It was the largest outbreak of malaria in recorded history. Whether the entire population (holoendemic) is effected is moot. It is the largest outbreak in history. Admit your error and move on. Malaria is not bound by cold winter temperatures.
The mosquito does not live in the winter, even indoors. The mosquito does not migrate. Ergo, the malaria survives the winter, and not indoors.
And even in the tropics, most cases of malaria happen indoors, as the vector is most active at dusk and dawn, when people are in bed.
As for Carson? The inventor of DDT was credited with saving millions of people (a hundred million according one source) . Stopping the usage of DDT has killed millions of people. Whether it was by malice or good intentions is moot. We all know what the road to hell is paved with.
This author lists some of the malfeasance in her book.
http://reason.com/archives/2002/06/12/silent-spring-at-40/1
As for Anthony’s supposed error? You sound like a kid on playground. “He did it first, Mom!”
Grow up. Admit your error. And quit trying to sound like an epidemiologist.
TomT: One point I had meant to add, was that even in the tropics, the mosquito will land and rest after the first blood meal. This allows the parasite to go through the needed stages, before the next meal.
With DDT on the walls, it either dies on landing, or being DDT averse, leaves the dwelling and rests outside. The result is the same; reduced human transmission.
One other point is that in full summer, it is quite warm at night, even in sub-arctic climes. Anecdotally, in places like Norman Wells, in northern Canada, one cannot be very comfortable at night without an air conditioner.
Also, in our malaria awareness classes, we were taught to sleep in A/C cooled rooms, as it reduced the risk of infection.
From TomT on August 31, 2012 at 10:31 am:
Here Anthony Watts reported on a study involving Plasmodium yoelii which causes rodent malaria.
The title of the post was “Another alarming climate myth bites the dust – mosquito borne malaria does NOT increase with temperature”.
The article in Nature reporting on the study had this title:
I can see no “vital error” on Anthony Watts’ part as the post follows what the Nature piece says.
If there is any “vital error” the blame goes to the researchers and Nature for initially reporting it, not Anthony Watts.
So where is the “vital error” in what the researchers and Nature reported?
Re: “The mosquito does not live in the winter, even indoors.”
In high latitudes mosquitoes mostly overwinter as eggs.
Re: “Ergo, the malaria survives the winter, and not indoors.”
The malaria parasite does not infect mosquitoes in winter, it overwinters in human hosts.
Re: “As for Anthony’s supposed error?”
Yes. He should comment on how Plasmodium yoelii is a good model system for temperature-dependent transmission. I frequently use the rodent malaria model and mosquito transmission in my own malaria parasite research — Plasmodium yoelii is good for many things, but using it to comment on AGW is not one of them.
Re DDT. I agree that it is fantastic. My comment was that it was discontinued in the 1960s for several reasons. Respectfully, you should read histories that don’t have a modern political bent.
Re: “And quit trying to sound like an epidemiologist.”
Correct, I am not an epidemiologist. But I have a great interest in malaria, spanning 20 years. I think that AGW and malaria transmission is an open subject, and I am aware of arguments both for and against the impact. Highly worthy of research.