When talking about harmful diseases I am sure one of THE most important topics are prevention and treatment. Ideally it would be best to never come in contact with any disease, so prevention is a key agenda. Sometimes the inevitable happens and we are unfortunate enough to contract a disease and become in a desperate search on how to cure the problem and that is where available treatments are the most valuable. For this particular post, like all the other post, I will be focusing on malaria.

Prevention

Let’s begin by discussing the preventive measure we can take to avoid being diagnosed with malaria.

Malaria is highly concentrated in the tropical, subtropical areas and especially in areas where anopheles mosquitoes lives in.

Transmission of malaria happens year-round and transmission is the most proactive in warmer region near the equator. Therefore, when traveling to those areas, extra precaution should be taken. There a few drugs on the market that is supposed to help decrease your chances of getting malaria. The preventive drugs recommendation for malaria is dependent on the country you plan to travel to. The following are some of the drugs that can be taken to prevent malaria: Atovaquone/Proguanil (Malarone), Doxycycline, Meloquine, Primaquine, Tafenoquine (Arakoda TM), and Tafenoquine (ArakodaTM). If you will like to see the list of when to consider or avoid these drugs look like at the following linking from the CDC:  https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/travelers/drugs.html.  Also the following is a treatment guideline table from the CDC for malaria: https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/resources/pdf/treatmenttable.pdf. One downfall is that there’s no drug that is 100% effective when it comes to preventing malaria. Unfortunately, research shows that malaria is becoming more and more resistant to treatment. This is becoming a big threat to how we control malaria. Nevertheless, there are other preventative measure then consuming drug treatment.

Another way to prevent getting malaria is by avoiding chances of getting bitten by a mosquito especially in infected areas. You can do this by staying in air-conditioned rooms with properly closed doors and windows or doors and windows with screens, wearing light long pants instead of shorts, and avoiding the outdoors in the evening and night (mosquitoes prefer to feed around this time).

When traveling on vacation, or for any other reasons, staying inside to avoid mosquito bites may seem impractical. There is one other way to avoid malaria. Using insecticide and bug repellent can be an effective way to throw off mosquito from feeding off you or the area it was sprayed in. The follow are the different brands that can be used as bug repellent for malaria: DEET products, IR3535, OLE products, and Picaridin. If you’ll like to read some of the most frequently asked question about malaria insect repellent, you can click on the following link from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/resources/pdf/fsp/repellents_2015.pdf. DDT use to be a popular pesticide used in the US during WWII up until it was banned by the US EPA in 1972. The reason for the cancellation of this effective pesticide was due to the unfavorable effects on the wildlife since it lingers in the environment. As mentioned before, one of the downfalls of insecticides and bug repellents is the fact that malaria is becoming resistance towards these methods.  

A cool video that shows how researchers are trying to come up with a new effective repellent is shown below (click the link). What is the most interesting part of the videos or something you learned from the video? Comments would be appreciated!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/future-repellents-mess-with-mosquit2013-12-23/ 

Symptoms

It is important to know the side effects of having malaria in order to know if you should get treated for it. If you traveled to one of the countries that has a record of transmitting malaria along having the following symptoms:

• Fever
• Chills
• Headaches
• Nausea and vomiting
• Muscle pain and fatigue
• Sweating
• Chest or abdominal pain
• Cough

THEN YOU HAVE MALARIA!!

Just joking these are common side effects of many sickness but if you do have some of those side effects and traveled to a country that has high reports of malaria, then you should talk about getting tested for malaria with your doctor.

Treatments

The two most common antimalarial drug to cure patient with malaria is artemisinin-based combination thereapies (ACTs) and Choloroquine . If you will like to look at the other drugs and look at some of their description you can click on the following link for the CDC https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/resources/pdf/clinicalguidance.pdf (page 6-8) Once again, the prevailing theme for the downfall of these drugs is the fact that malaria is becoming drug resistant to these treatment.

IMPORTANT QUESTION OF THE DAY: So as many of you might know from previous biology course, people with sickle cell disease are protected from malaria. Malaria transmission is high in Africa and Sickle cell is predominately in people with African or Caribbean family background. Do you think there is a connection between these two things? Really comment about this below!

One more thing before I go. If you would like to get an in-depth overview pertaining to malaria you should watch the video below from one of my favorite YouTube channels.

Well guys this it for this blog! It was good while it lasted. Until next time…

Additional Citations:

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/travelers/drugs.html

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/distribution.html

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/reduction/drug_resistance.html

https://www.aafp.org/afp/2012/0515/p973.html

http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/ddtgen.pdf

https://www.malariaconsortium.org/media-downloads/19

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/malaria/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20351190 

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/diagnosis_treatment/index.html