Papua New Guinea

Predictors of acute bacterial meningitis (ABM) were assessed in 554 children in Papua New Guinea 0.2–10 years of age who were hospitalized with culture-proven meningitis, probable meningitis, or non-meningitic illness investigated by lumbar puncture.

There are sparse published data relating to the pharmacokinetic properties of artemether, lumefantrine, and their active metabolites in children, especially desbutyl-lumefantrine.

This study confirmed previous findings that Pf38 is a polymorphic gene under balancing selection.

Overall, our results illustrate that PNG malaria-endemic regions harbor a complex mixture of P. vivax strains, and emphasize the importance of malaria control strategies that would be effective against a highly diverse parasite population.

These results could have an impact on vector infection and transmission dynamics in areas where Anopheles transmit both parasites, i.e., the elimination of filarial worms in a co-endemic locale could enhance malaria transmission.

Surveillance for Plasmodium falciparum drug resistance mutations is becoming an established tool for assessing antimalarial treatment effectiveness.

We developed a multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR)–based assay specific for known species-specific nucleotide differences in the internal transcribed spacer 2 region and identified the five species most frequently implicated in transmitting disease (An. punctulatus, An. koliensis, An. farauti 1, An. hinesorum, and An. farauti 4).

Here we follow the evolution of the rDNA second internal transcribed spacer (ITS2) and the mitochondrial DNA cytochrome oxidase I subunit in the malaria mosquito Anopheles longirostris from Papua New Guinea (PNG).

The degree of similarity between findings from the acceptability studies undertaken in sub-Saharan Africa and PNG allows some generalization relating to the implementation of IPTi outside of Africa:

The qPCR assay developed proved optimal for detection of all four Plasmodium species.