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- Creators: School of Life Sciences
- Status: Published
Hundreds of thousands of people die annually from malaria; a protozoan of the genus Plasmodium is responsible for this mortality. The Plasmodium parasite undergoes several life stages within the mosquito vector, the transition between which require passage across the lumen of the mosquito midgut. It has been observed that in about 15% of parasites that develop ookinetes in the mosquito abdomen, sporozoites never develop in the salivary glands, indicating that passage across the midgut lumen is a significant barrier in parasite development (Gamage-Mendis et al., 1993). We aim to investigate a possible correlation between passage through the midgut lumen and drug-resistance trends in Plasmodium falciparum parasites. This study contains a total of 1024 Anopheles mosquitoes: 187 Anopheles gambiae and 837 Anopheles funestus samples collected in high malaria transmission areas of Mozambique between March and June of 2016. Sanger sequencing will be used to determine the prevalence of known resistance alleles for anti-malarial drugs: chloroquine resistance transporter (pfcrt), multidrug resistance (pfmdr1) gene, dihydropteroate synthase (pfdhps) and dihydrofolate reductase (pfdhfr). We compare prevalence of resistance between abdomen and head/thorax in order to determine whether drug resistant parasites are disproportionately hindered during their passage through the midgut lumen. A statistically significant difference between resistance alleles in the two studied body sections supports the efficacy of new anti-malarial gene surveillance strategies in areas of high malaria transmission.
This study compares vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic with previous studies on vaccine hesitancy to evaluate the major driving factors behind COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among undergraduate students at Arizona State University (ASU). Undergraduate students were surveyed with questions regarding different aspects of vaccines, including personal vaccination history, opinions on the COVID-19 vaccine, knowledge of the COVID-19 vaccine, and reasoning behind vaccination status. The survey was distributed through school listservs within ASU. Close-ended questions underwent statistical analysis on IBM SPSS and open-ended questions were analyzed using content analysis. Results indicated that the main driving factors behind vaccine hesitancy are believing in natural immunity, familial influence, lack of trust behind the technology of the COVID-19 vaccine, and preferring the risk of COVID-19 infection over the risk of COVID-19 vaccination. The main driving factors behind vaccine hesitancy appear to be similar to driving factors in the past, with an increase of mistrust surrounding the vaccine.