Promising results seen for two genetic weapons against malaria

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Two new papers by researchers at the Malaria Research Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report successes for highly promising strategies against malaria, a disease that kills more than 400,000 people each year, mostly children age 5 and under in sub-Saharan Africa.

Malaria is spread by female Anopheles mosquitoes carrying the malaria parasite. One promising way to prevent malaria, in addition to traditional approaches such as bed nets and insecticide, is to modify the mosquitoes so they are no longer capable of spreading the parasite to humans.