By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Herds of African cattle may hold the secret to new ways of fighting parasitic diseases like malaria, which kills some 600,000 people a year, scientists said on Friday. The researchers from the University of Edinburgh found that cows are protected from a parasite that causes a deadly disease called East Coast Fever if they have previously been infected with a closely-related but milder species of the parasite. "Our results suggest seeking a simple vaccine that could protect cows from East Coast fever by inoculating them with a related but far less harmful parasite," said Mark Woolhouse, who led the study with a team from several other universities and the International Livestock Research Institute. "A similar process might be at work in malaria, where infection with the less harmful Plasmodium vivax parasite may protect people from the Plasmodium falciparum parasite." Like the cattle disease East Coast fever, malaria is caused by a single-celled parasite, Plasmodium, although more than one species of Plasmodium can cause the disease.
March 21, 2015 at 03:38AM
via Lazahealth.org
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