according to the World Health Organization<\/a>. While standard antimalarial drugs clear the parasite from the blood and resolve symptoms, they don\u2019t necessarily stop transmission from one person to another via mosquitoes.<\/p>\nTo stop the parasite spreading, Dr Sayers and her colleagues have zeroed in on specific proteins involved in the male parasite’s reproduction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we disrupt these proteins in the male parasite \u2013 which effectively acts as the malaria parasite sperm \u2013 the cells can\u2019t develop properly, so the parasite can\u2019t be transmitted.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea has already led to promising results in the lab. Dr Sayers has shown that disrupting these proteins does stop the parasite from reproducing in mosquitoes. But there’s still at least another decade of research in animal models and drug design before a treatment could be used to prevent malaria transmission to humans.<\/p>\n
When this happens, the approach could be built into existing treatments for the symptoms of malaria delivered in drugs taken orally or by injection. This will have the dual function of clearing the infection and halting the spread of the parasite from one individual to another.<\/p>\n
Beyond malaria<\/p>\n
But in studying these proteins \u2013 which are produced by a gene involved in male parasite reproduction \u2013 Dr Sayers and her colleagues found they\u2019re not unique to malaria parasites.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found this male-specific gene in the parasite\u2019s sperm cells, and it’s present in pretty much all sexually reproducing species, including humans,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
When she looked more closely, she found the human version is highly expressed in the testes \u2013 suggesting it may play a role in sperm development \u2013 raising the possibility that the parasite\u2019s same biological machinery could also be at work in human sperm. So if tampering with the proteins can cause the male\u00a0Plasmodium\u00a0parasites to become infertile, maybe there\u2019s something similar going on in the genes of infertile men.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some published studies showing infertile men with mutations in these proteins or changes in the expression of these genes, so it\u2019s not such a wild idea that there\u2019s a link,\u201d Dr Sayers says.<\/p>\n
She takes the idea a step further with a more speculative line of inquiry: whether these same male sex genes could be targeted to develop a non-hormonal male contraceptive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m talking about malaria on one hand and male contraceptive pills on the other. It might sound like a strange leap to make, but the biology could be connected. Right now it\u2019s an idea, but I think it\u2019s definitely something worth exploring in future research.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Disrupting the cycle Malaria infects around 250 million people each year and causes more than 600,000 deaths globally,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,69596,137,111612,111613,337,88733,69597,129865,101615,294685,69598,282280,99038],"class_list":["post-653698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-division-of-equity-diversity-inclusion","tag-health","tag-healthy-lives","tag-medicine-health","tag-research","tag-science-tech","tag-sdg","tag-sdg10","tag-sdg15","tag-sdg16","tag-sdg3","tag-sdg6","tag-sdg9"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}