Tropical medicine and parasitology : official organ of Deutsche Tropenmedizinische Gesellschaft and of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)
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Trop. Med. Parasitol. · Sep 1995
Comparative StudyInnate lack of susceptibility of Ugandan Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense to DL-alpha-difluoromethylornithine (DFMO).
Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense isolates from South East Uganda were characterized for susceptibility to the drugs suramin, nifurtimox, melarsoprol and DL-alpha-difluoromethylornithine (DFMO). Two different assays were used to determine the drug susceptibility of the field isolates: the [3H]hypoxanthine incorporation assay (24 hours) and the long term viability assay (10 days). All trypanosome stocks were susceptible to suramin and nifurtimox. ⋯ All T. b. rhodesiense stocks were found in vitro to have innate tolerance to DFMO, under conditions where T. b. gambiense stocks from West Africa were susceptible to the drug. Ugandan T. b. rhodesiense stocks did respond to 25-100 micrograms/ml after 10 days of drug exposure, but the DFMO level reached in cerebrospinal fluid during treatment is only 16.3 +/- 7.8 micrograms/ml. Therefore, DFMO is not an appropriate alternative or backup drug for treatment of Rhodesian sleeping sickness in Uganda.
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Household heads were questioned about household income and household expenditures on the treatment or prevention of malaria in a nationwide malaria knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) survey conducted in Malawi in 1992. Very low income households with an average annual income of $68 constituted 52% of the sampled households. The primary income source for these households was farm production (92%), with the majority of goods produced consumed by the household and not available as discretionary income. ⋯ The overall direct expenditure on treatment of malaria illness in household members was $19.13 per year (28% of annual income) among very low income households and $19.84 per year (2% of annual income) among low to high income households. The indirect cost of malaria, calculated on the basis of days of work lost, was $2.13 per year (3.1% of annual income) among very low income households and $20.61 per year (2.2% of annual income) among low to high income households. Very low income households carried a disproportionate share of the economic burden of malaria, with total direct and indirect cost of malaria among these households consuming 32% of annual household income compared to 4.2% among households in the low to high income categories.
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Trop. Med. Parasitol. · Mar 1994
Treatment of malaria fever episodes among children in Malawi: results of a KAP survey.
Caretakers of children (< 10 years of age) were questioned about management of pediatric malarial fever episodes in a nation-wide knowledge, attitudes, and practices survey conducted in Malawi. A total of 1,531 households in 30 randomly selected clusters of 51 households each were sampled and interviewed. Overall 557 caretakers reported a fever in their child in the previous 2 weeks; 43%-judged the illness as severe. ⋯ Optimal therapy (administration of an antimalarial promptly and at the proper dosage) was received by only 7% of febrile children. Children taken to clinic were twice as likely to receive optimal therapy as were non-attenders. Identification of critical points in the optimal therapy algorithm and characteristics of caretakers linked with sub-optimal therapy may help malaria control programs target specific groups and health education messages to improve treatment of malaria fever episodes.
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Trop. Med. Parasitol. · Dec 1992
First record of Angiostrongylus cantonensis (Chen, 1935) (Nematoda: Metastrongylidae) in the Dominican Republic.
Rats, Rattus norvegicus, trapped in some sections (barrios) of the city of Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic showed that 5 of them from two barrios harbored the nematode Angiostrongylus cantonensis in the pulmonary artery. Macerated and digested terrestrial snails, Subulina octona, collected from the backyards of houses where the rats were trapped contained L2 and L3 larvae of the nematode. ⋯ Gastrointestinal hemorrhage, a rare symptom due to another species, the American A. costaricensis, which occurs in mesenteric arterioles of rodents and humans, is in the recent literature; the patient was a 41-year old Dominican. Thus the Dominican Republic is the first country in the Western Hemisphere to have the two species of Angiostrongylus.
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Trop. Med. Parasitol. · Sep 1992
Is the prevalence of HTLV-1 infection higher in Strongyloides carriers than in non-carriers?
To assess the concomitance of strongyloidiasis and HTLV-1 infection, an epidemiological survey was conducted in Okinawa, Japan, using the agar-plate culture, a highly sensitive method for detection of Strongyloides stercoralis. No significant difference in the positive rate of anti-HTLV-1 antibody was found between Strongyloides carriers and non-carriers. This result suggests that these two infections occur independently.