
MIT scholar fights malaria with magnets - drjohnson
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/05/04/mit-scholar-fights-malaria-with-magnets/aixXl6a5quOF340XMEgtnK/story.html 
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Jemaclus
I wanna know how a mechanical engineer happens to learn enough about malaria
for the thought to even cross his mind to check the iron in the blood with a
magnet. What's that thought process like?

Fighting malaria is something I'm interested in pursuing, but my background is
heavily in the computer science arena. How do I go about finding out enough
about malaria to be able to actually contribute to the problem? (And I don't
mean merely writing a check to the Anti Malaria Foundation or whatever.)

~~~
atmosx
First read a couple of papers in Malaria. You can easily go through
terminology using wikipedia/google. If you don't have a strong background in
human pathophysiology it's going to take some time, but given the right amount
of time it's not thing really hard. You'll just give the time for some
concepts to sink in.

What I'd like to see is an open source version of this _machine_ which can be
easily reproduced in pure countries.

HOWEVER, smart as it may seem, if I don't see some triple-checked hard-data,
it's hard to tell if the _magnets_ approach actually works and here is were
professional _clinical trials_ are made. Because in real life it's extremely
hard to take say 5.000 blood samples from people who might be infected (e.g.
Africans) right down the results, then go to a professional lab and compare
the samples. Write down the results, find in which conditions concentration of
'Fe' is high in blood. Probably talking to the IDI[1] would be a nice first
step and so on.

[1]: [http://www.irondisorders.org/iron-
overload](http://www.irondisorders.org/iron-overload)

~~~
Jemaclus
Awesome. Thanks for the tip!

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ihnorton
Also covered in the NYT about a year ago:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/health/new-rapid-
malaria-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/health/new-rapid-malaria-test-
uses-magnets-and-a-laser.html)

The Gates Foundation has been funding development of a very similar technique
by another group since 2010:
[http://www.malariaworld.org/sites/default/files/mwjournal/ar...](http://www.malariaworld.org/sites/default/files/mwjournal/article/MWJ2013_4_7.pdf)

It appears to be an active and promising area of research as several other
groups have published work back to at least 2008:
[http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130312/srep01431/full/srep01...](http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130312/srep01431/full/srep01431.html)
(2013)
[http://www.malariajournal.com/content/9/1/207](http://www.malariajournal.com/content/9/1/207)
(2010)
[http://www.cell.com/biophysj/abstract/S0006-3495(08)70272-8](http://www.cell.com/biophysj/abstract/S0006-3495\(08\)70272-8)
(2008)

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tom_jones
To renew my faith in humanity, every day I look for some happy news. I hope
this technology is successful.

~~~
DiabloD3
I agree. Sometimes I wonder if its only stories like this that even keep me
going every day.

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batoure
The title of this article should be "Yay Science!"

During the time when I lived in Africa I was treated for "presumed" malaria on
several occasions despite taking preventative medication. The key is
"presumed" because my fever cycled at night (the best time to draw blood for
the existing test) they could never actually show that I had the disease
because at night the lab was closed.

Malaria is an awful disease and the ability to treat earlier and possibly
prevent the spread is fantastic news.

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teddythetwig
Question, the article states that the device should be able to determine
whether the malaria parasite has infected the subject while they are
asymptomatic. From my limited knowledge of malaria, I was under the impression
that during the asymptomatic stage, malaria is multiplying in the liver and
does not infect any red blood cells. How will this detect malaria if they are
not excreting the iron crystals into the blood stream?

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kirk21
Great. Guess the next step is to launch genetically modified mosquitoes that
do not carry the disease and can replace the other ones.

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roblambert
A certain Jesse Pinkman quote comes to mind
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwVDDxoKBk4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwVDDxoKBk4)

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spacehome
This isn't Reddit.

~~~
__matt
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying
that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"

~~~
geuis
My account is rather older than a year and I share the same sentiment. This
isn't reddit.

