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| ©Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health |
| Anopheles gambiae mosquito infected with GFP-expressing AgDNV. ( |
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Malaria Research Institute have identified a previously unknown virus that is infectious to Anopheles gambiae - the mosquito primarily responsible for transmitting malaria.
According to the researchers, the discovered virus could one day be used to pass on new genetic information to An. gambiae mosquitoes as part of a strategy to control malaria, which kills over one million people worldwide each year.
The virus, AgDNV, is a densonucleosis virus or "densovirus," which are common to mosquitoes and other insects, but do not infect vertebrate animals such as humans. Although the virus does not appear to harm the mosquitoes, the researchers determined it is highly infectious to mosquito larvae and is easily passed on to the adults.
According to Jason Rasgon, PhD, senior author of the study, the discovery came about serendipitously while the research team was conducting experiments to determine whether Wolbachia bacteria could be used to infect An. gambiae mosquito cells. During the analysis, Xiaoxia Ren, a postdoctoral fellow with Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, noticed an "artifact," that appeared as a prominent band in the gel used to detect the bacteria.
"Finding artifacts such as this one during experiments is not uncommon, but we decided to investigate this one further since we kept observing it over and over. When we sequenced it we were surprised to learn that we had found a new virus," explained Rasgon, an assistant professor with the Bloomberg School's W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.
According to Rasgon, the virus could be potentially altered to kill the mosquito or make An. gambiae incapable of transmitting malaria. To test the concept, the research team successfully used altered AgDNV to express harmless green fluorescent protein in the adult mosquitoes which could be easily spotted under the microscope.
"In theory, we could use this virus to produce a lethal toxin in the mosquito or instruct the mosquito to die after 10 days, which is before it can transmit the malaria parasite to humans. However, these concepts are many years away," said Rasgon.
While science comes up with ever more convoluted schemes to address malaria, they completely ignore an inexpensive and proven technology that already exists to prevent/cure this disease.
Here is a summary of the first tiny study conducted in hospitals in Ghana: [Link] Since this initial test, over 1000 malaria infected Africans have been cured, for a few dollars each, in recorded hospital/clinical trials in Rwanda, Ghana, Zimbabwe, with no failure of treatment to date. Ghana has since licensed this substance as a homeopathic drug.
Mysteriously, the medical community has been resistant to embrace this news and the NGOs tasked with global health have refused to even acknowledge the results when they were sent them. The WHO did ask for more science and samples, but never responded after receiving them.
In the meantime, organizations such as the Gates Foundation pour hundreds of millions of dollars into research for chemical methods of eradicating African mosquitoes as the best way to eliminate malaria, and the researchers in the above article delve even deeper into their grand complexities.
Google "nanoparticle silver" to learn more about the latest discoveries in this suppressed field of medical silver applications.