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Theileria drug resistance: targeting the mitochondria
Theileria drug resistance is spreading because bovine theileriosis treatment leans on a single drug, buparvaquone. A drug-repurposing screen of the Global Health Priority Box found that rotenone kills Theileria annulata infected cells, keeps working against buparvaquone-resistant cells, and collapses their mitochondrial energy supply. That makes mitochondrial bioenergetics a resistance-independent target for next-generation antiparasitic drugs. Why theileria drug resistance has become a livestock problem Bovine theileriosis is a severe tick-borne disease, and Theileria annulata is the parasite behind it across tropical and subtropical regions. Herds pay for the infection in mortality, reduced milk yield, lost productivity and reproductive impairment. Commercial operations feel it most, because they have no second drug class…
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Fasciolosis vaccine: why 44 trials changed nothing
Cattle, sheep, goats, and buffalo still have no licensed fasciolosis vaccine to buy. A systematic review pulled together 44 studies and found the antigen side of the problem well supplied while the reporting side was not, with the strongest trial satisfying just 13 of 37 checklist items. Until that changes, control rests on flukicides such as closantel, on pasture choices, and on cutting snail habitat. What the systematic review actually screened Three databases were queried, two of them returning 751 and 5,000 records and the third returning nothing at all. Title screening dropped 5,599 records and left 152 candidates, and after deduplication and full text review 44 studies made it…
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Closantel and Antibiotic Resistance: How a Sheep Dewormer Could Fight Superbugs
There’s a drug sitting in barns across the world that most human doctors have never heard of. It’s used to treat liver flukes in cattle and sheep, and it’s been around for decades. But researchers are now looking at this same drug—closantel—and wondering if it might help us fight one of the biggest threats to human health: antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About Let me be direct: we’re losing the war against superbugs. The World Health Organization projects that antibiotic resistance could cause 10 million deaths every year by 2050. That number is staggering, and it’s not science fiction—it’s a conservative estimate based on current trends. Gram-negative…
