Posted 06/11/20. Victor Chaumeau and colleagues assessed the impact of outdoor residual spraying on the biting rate of malaria mosquitoes in four villages in Kayin state, Myanmar. They reported a 10-fold decrease in mosquito biting rate immediately after the intervention and concluded that outdoor residual spraying can be used to control malaria mosquitoes in this area.
Posted 25/09/2020. Prevention of mother to child transmission of hepatitis B with maternal tenofovir DF is one option to reach elimination of this infection. However, implementing this in a resource limited setting is challenging. Marieke Bierhoff and colleagues describe the most common challenges and possible solutions like transport assistance and local agreements to facilitate access.
Posted 27/08/2020. Germana Bancone and colleagues from EDCD (Nepal) and SMRU conducted this study in malaria endemic districts of Nepal, showing that G6PD deficiency is prevalent among most ethnic groups across the region. G6PD testing will be necessary for safe deployment of 8-aminoquinolines in order to eliminate Plasmodium vivax malaria in Nepal.
Posted 12/06/2020. Safety of drugs is important, particularly during pregnancy. Makoto Saito and colleagues have pooled the data of 4503 women who had malaria in pregnancy and found that the currently used artemisinin-based combination therapies are equally safe for fetus. This study also highlights that risk of small-for-gestational-age (SGA) is high after malaria in pregnancy even treated with highly efficacious drugs, suggesting that prevention is important for reducing SGA in malaria endemic areas.
Posted 21/04/2020. This study by Victor Chaumeau and colleagues was carried out in order to assess the longevity of insecticide mists applied to outdoor vegetation. Insecticidal effect of sprayed plant material against malaria mosquitoes lasted for several weeks. These results provide a strong rationale for using outdoor residual spraying against the mosquito vectors that rest outside premises.
Posted 20/12/2019. How do birth outcomes, a mother\u2019s nutrition, and how a mother feeds her infant relate to chronic undernutrition among refugee and migrant infants along the Thailand-Myanmar border? Why do these mothers feed their infants as they do? Come learn more from a recent study by Ahmar Hashmi and colleagues at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit.
Posted 22/10/2019. Rose McGready and SMRU colleagues contributed RCT data from the Thailand-Myanmar border to this large review on low- and middle-income countries (21 studies in 20\u2009882 children). The results suggests targeting parental, environmental and nutritional factors from pre-pregnancy through childhood, as a way forward to improve health and development of children in such settings.
Posted 16/07/2019. Worrying nutritional trends in possibly the longest and largest cohort of nearly 50,000 refugee and migrant pregnant women in a LMIC setting. Ahmar Hashmi and colleagues at SMRU summarise trends in under- and over-nutrition among pregnant women, and show a double burden of malnutrition in these marginalised and vulnerable communities from the Myanmar-Thailand border.
Posted 05/07/2019. Health information can be life-saving, but how can it be conveyed to those who could benefit most? Through analysis of an unsuccessful public health campaign, Mary Ellen Gilder and SMRU colleagues learned from migrant women valuable lessons about health messaging in communities where most women do not complete the fourth grade.
Posted 02/07/2019. Highly efficacious treatment can limit the cumulative deleterious impact of malaria during pregnancy on the mother and fetus. Correct assessment of treatment efficacy with an adequate length of follow up is required. Makoto Saito and colleagues at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) on the Thailand-Myanmar border suggest that pregnant women need to be followed up longer than the currently recommended duration of follow-up to assess antimalarial drug efficacy.
Posted 11/12/2018. Phaik Yeong Cheah and colleagues report a qualitative study on how best to seek broad consent to sharing individual level health research data beyond research collaborations. Their findings demonstrated that research participants prioritise information about the potential benefits and harms of data sharing. The researchers also found that explaining data sharing to research participants was challenging.
Posted 03/07/2018. Chloroquine, the recommended treatment for vivax malaria, delays but does not prevent relapses. Primaquine is the only widely available drug that prevents relapses but it can induce haemolysis in patients with G6PD deficiency. Cindy Chu and colleagues showed that added to chloroquine, primaquine is very effective for relapse prevention, but should be used alongside quantitative G6PD testing.
Posted 25/04/2018. Mary-Ellen Gilder and colleagues at SMRU demonstrate low levels of primaquine in breast milk, findings that should change treatment policy allowing more breastfeeding women to be cured of P.vivax. This will potentially reduce the global burden of this infection which has significant negative consequences for pregnant mothers and infants.
Posted 17/04/2018. This new Lancet malaria seminar, by Elizabeth Ashley and Charlie Woodrow, is one of a series of clinically focused, structured, up-to-date reviews which are grouped together in The Lancet Clinic with other relevant content. The aim of the seminars is to give a comprehensive overview of diseases to practising clinicians, emphasising recent advances, controversies and uncertainties.
Posted 17/10/2017. Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax malaria in pregnancy both increase stillbirth risk, which is likely to increase as endemicity declines. A study by SMRU and University of Melbourne researchers shows that better P. falciparum malaria control efforts could prevent up to 1 in 5 to 8 stillbirths in sub-Saharan Africa.
Posted 26/09/2017. Professor Phaik Yeong Cheah and colleagues published a paper describing their experience and challenges engaging with communities involved in the Targeted Malaria Elimination initiative in Karen State, Myanmar. The report gives a detailed account of the activities conducted and challenges encountered which included difficulties explaining concepts like drug resistance and submicroscopic infection.
Posted 25/08/2017. In more than 50,000 pregnancies where 16% of women had malaria infection, the odds of small for gestational age and preterm birth following falciparum, and vivax malaria, were quantified. These newborn effects have life-long implications and efforts to effectively prevent malaria in pregnancy must be pursued.
Posted 14/08/2017. Through history and attributes of migration of Multi Drug Resistant Tuberculosis patients before diagnosis and treatment, and spatial analysis of their travelling patterns, the study highlights links between human migration and dispersal of multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis across wide geographic areas. It confirms needs for interventions suited to migrants\u2019 life circumstances.
Posted 13/06/2017. It has been maintained for decades that quinine is the safest drug for treatment of malaria in the first trimester of pregnancy. In the largest analysis of data from Thailand and Africa, artemisinins are reported to be at least as safe as quinine. This will simplify treatment protocols worldwide.
Posted 17/10/2016. Training local Karen and Burman women as skilled birth attendants in refugee settings resulted in no adverse perinatal outcomes and many positive outcomes such as a drop in stillbirths and infant deaths and more babies being born in clinics rather than at home, says a new study, led by Professor Rose McGready and published in PLOS ONE.
![\"Victor](\"https://www.tropmedres.ac/news/research-highlights/impact-of-outdoor-residual-spraying-on-the-biting-rate-of-malaria-vectors-in-myanmar/responsive_image?ratio=r16x9&scale=w760\")
\n \n \n\n\n