Malignant malaria found in apes

The parasite which causes malignant malaria in humans has been identified in gorillas for the first time.                                                                        

Researchers analysed faeces from wild gorillas in Cameroon and blood samples from a captive animal from Gabon.

The study says increasing contact between humans and primates due to logging and deforestation raises the risk of transmission of new pathogens.

The research findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

New genetic sampling techniques allowed scientists from France, Cameroon, Gabon and the US to examine evidence of malaria parasites in the faecal matter of wild gorillas and chimpanzees in Cameroon.

"Sampling malaria parasites from apes in the wild has until now been very difficult", said Dr Francisco Ayala from the University of California, Irvine.

The team also took blood samples from wild born, pet animals in Gabon.

DNA evidence of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malignant malaria in humans, was found in faecal samples from two gorilla subspecies, the highly endangered cross-river gorilla and the western lowland gorilla.

The parasite was identified in a blood sample from a captive gorilla.

Malaria parasites were first identified in chimpanzees and gorillas in Africa by scientists working in the 1920s.

But this new technology has allowed scientists to confirm the presence of P. falciparum.

Disease reservoir

P. falciparum is the most deadly type of malaria infection.

It is most common in Africa, south of the Sahara, where the World Health Organization says it accounts for a large part of the extremely high mortality in the region.

The study says that human destruction of the natural forest habitat means more contact with primates and greater chances of pathogen transmission between the two, including from humans to the endangered great apes.

Dr Ayala said the findings underline the danger of contact between the two. "Even if it were eradicated in humans we would still have the problem that it's present in apes and therefore they would be a reservoir for the disease.

"It's not clear what we can do with respect to this problem other than trying to decrease contact."

Endemic?

Dr Ian Hastings, senior lecturer at the Liverpool School of Medicine said it would help to know more about the spread of the parasite in gorillas.

"Mosquitoes often bite different species. Often they have a preference but if they can't find what they want to bite they'll just go and bite something else," he said.

"The question is whether this is just sporadic infection that's come from humans after the mosquito bit an infected person and passed it on to gorillas or whether it's endemic and is passed from gorilla to gorilla."

Dr Ayala acknowledges that Plasmodium parasites are much less malignant for apes than humans because primates have been exposed to them for so long.

"They have had P. reichenowi and perhaps other species for thousands or millions of generations, so one expects less malignancy to have taken place over time."

A rare glimpse of the cave of crystals

Mexico's Cave of Crystals stunned geologists when it was first discovered in 2000. The underground chamber contains some of the largest natural crystals ever found - some of the selenite structures have grown to more than 10m long. Professor Iain Stewart got a rare glimpse of the subterranean spectacle while filming for the new BBC series How the Earth Made Us.

It's about 50C in there, but it's the virtually 100% humidity added on top that makes it a potential killer.

That combination means that when you breathe air into your body, the surface of your lungs is actually the coolest surface the air encounters. That means the fluid starts to condense inside your lungs - and that's really not good news.

When the cave was first discovered it was just an accident.

Miners working in the Naica silver mine broke through the walls of the cavern and were astounded to discover these enormous crystals - the biggest anywhere on Earth.

To enter the cave, special gear needs to be worn

But when the first people went in to explore, they were almost overcome by the conditions - and there's some pretty hairy video footage of them coming out of the cave on the verge of losing consciousness. So we knew the dangers were real.

When you first look at the kit your first thought is: "Is that it?"

There's a special cooling suit - which is basically like a suit of chain mail but filled with ice cubes.

Then there's a breathing system which feeds cool, dry air into your mask.

It's OK to take the mask off for a short while, but do without it for more than about 10 minutes, and it's likely that you're going to start keeling over.

I was lucky of course. All I had to do was stand there and talk, but the cameraman and all the others helping set out the lights were having to work in these conditions, wearing these cumbersome suits, and they really struggled.

We had a doctor outside the cave to monitor our vital signs, and we were coming out of the cavern with our heart rates up at 180.

The biggest danger was falling over; rescuing someone inside would have been very tricky.

The cave is at risk of being closed

Despite all the dangers, my overwhelming memory is the sheer beauty of the place.

Whenever people around me were faffing around with equipment, I'd just stop and look around at the crystals.

It's such a glorious place, it's like being in a modern art exhibit.

I kept reminding myself: "You're in the Naica Cave", because there's only a handful of geologists that have ever been in there, and so I was aware of how incredibly privileged I was.

Yet remarkably, for the people who own and run the Naica mine, the crystal cave is a side-show, a distraction.

They don't make any money out of it and sooner or later, when the economics of the mine change, it will close.

The pumps will be taken out, the mine and the cave will flood, and the crystals will once more be out of our reach.

But perhaps we should console ourselves with the thought that there are certainly lots more crystal caves waiting to be discovered.

For starters, the geology of the area around the cave suggests that there could be more crystal caves in the area around Naica.

But more broadly, the Earth's crust must be riddled with wonders like this.

We know more about the outer edges of the Solar System than we do about the first kilometre of the Earth's crust.

As we learn more about the crust, we can be sure that there will be discoveries even more spectacular than Naica. I just hope I'm around to see them.

Nano technology tackles heart disease

A molecule designed to find, latch onto, then treat hardened arteries could offer a new way to tackle heart disease, say its inventors.

Nanoburrs, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), target only damaged cells in blood vessel walls.                                                                   

Once attached, they can release drugs in precisely the right place.

But the British Heart Foundation warned the technology was some years from being used in patients.

The hardening of the arteries which supply the heart, or atherosclerosis, can eventually lead to blockages which can cause heart attacks.

The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal says specialists normally use tiny balloons to force open the vessels, then place a tube called a stent inside to keep it open.

Often the process triggers a rapid re-growth of tissue around the stent which can lead to the artery blocking again, and a recent advance has been a stent which releases drugs for a number of days after insertion to keep this process under control.

The MIT approach offers another way to get these drugs to exactly the right place.

Its nanoburrs are coated with proteins which can only stick to a structure in the blood vessel wall called the "basement membrane".

This is only exposed when the wall is damaged, so only damaged sections of blood vessel are targeted.

Once in place, a reaction takes place to release the drug over a prolonged period - up to 12 days so far.

Long way off

Professor Robert Langer, one of the authors of the research, said: "This is a very exciting example of nanotechnology and cell targeting in action."

He said the technology could target any condition in which the cell wall was compromised in this way, including certain types of cancer, and other inflammatory diseases.

Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said that while the technology was "promising", there were many time-consuming obstacles to overcome before it could be regularly used in patients.

He said: "This is an interesting proof of principle. People have been looking for a long time for ways to target a particular drug to a particular part of the body.

"It wouldn't be able to replace the need for a balloon and stent to open an artery, but it's possible that one day, it may be able to deliver a drug to treat atherosclerosis itself."