VOA慢速英语2013 防治疟疾，脑癌和肺结核

 

AS IT IS 2013-09-02 Fighting Malaria¹, Brain Cancer and TB 防治疟疾，脑癌和肺结核

Welcome to As It Is, from VOA Learning English. 

I’m Christopher Cruise.

Today, we’ll report the latest news in the fight against three deadly enemies: malaria, brain cancer and tuberculosis².  

Jeri Watson tells us about the development of a new drug that fights malaria quickly and inexpensively.

And I’ll tell you about how stem cells taken from a person’s body fat may one day be used to fight brain cancer. 

But first, we report on a campaign for money to fight the world’s second-deadliest infectious disease.

Some forms of tuberculosis are resistant³ to drug treatments. Health experts say these strains of tuberculosis -- TB -- present a major threat and could spread widely.

The World Health Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria are seeking help in the fight against TB. Mario Ritter reports.

The number of new tuberculosis cases has gone down every year since 2006. And the number of TB-related deaths is expected to reach a 50 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2015. Yet the World Health Organization says there were almost nine million new cases of TB and 1.4 million deaths from the disease in 2011.

Mario Raviglione is director of the World Health Organization’s Stop TB department. He is happy with a two percent decline in the number of new infections every year. But he says the progress is still too slow.

“We are not seeing a major effect in getting the numbers of cases of TB reduced year-by-year in an accelerated way.”

Two areas -- Europe and Africa -- will likely not cut the TB death rate by 2015, which is the goal set by the United Nations. Mr. Raviglione reports that in Western Europe and North America, there are about five or six TB cases for every 100,000 persons. He says the numbers in Africa are much higher.

“In Africa you find peaks, especially in southern Africa, like South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho etcetera, of a thousand cases per 100,000 -- so, many times higher than what you see in rich countries.”

The World Health Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria say they need an extra $1.6 billion every year to treat and prevent the disease. They say that money could pay for treatment for 17 million people with TB and save 6 million lives between 2014 and 2016.

Mr. Raviglione says about 60 percent of the $1.6 billion dollars would be for WHO operations in Africa. 

I’m Mario Ritter.     

Stem cells have the ability to develop into many kinds of cells in the body. A new report says stem cells taken from a person’s own body fat may one day be used to fight a deadly form of brain cancer.

The brain tumor⁴ known as glioblastoma mainly affects men. Most patients do not live more than a year after the tumor is found. By operating, doctors can remove most of the cancer. But that does not cure the patient.

Doctor Alfredo Qui?ones-Hinojosa is with the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He and other researchers are working to improve a treatment aimed at the cancer cells left in patients after the operation.

In recent years, doctors have been studying an adult stem cell -- called mesenchymal -- which move toward these cancer cells. The stem cells now used on patients come from bone marrow⁵ from donors⁶. Dr. Qui?ones-Hinojosa wants to get them from the patient’s own fat tissue. That method would be less costly⁷ and avoid the risk of rejection⁸.

Laboratory test results seem promising⁹. But it is not clear how these stem cells seek out the cancer cells.

The Johns Hopkins researcher and his team have begun experiments with animals. He says it will be three to five years before human testing begins.

The findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Researchers in the United States are working on a new way to fight plasmodium, the organism responsible for malaria in humans. The new drug is called ELQ-300. As Jeri Watson tells us, the drug acts quickly and in an unusual way.

Researcher Michael Riscoe is with the Oregon Health and Science University. He says the drug attacks the mitochondria -- energy-producing structures in the plasmodium -- and the genetic¹⁰ building blocks they produce.

“So the plasmodium mitochondrion serves as a factory to make these DNA¹¹ building blocks, but this is completely blocked by ELQ-300. Studies show that the drug acts very quickly to shut down this process -- in fact, only about 10 minutes.”

A big issue in the fight against malaria is the plasmodium parasite¹²’s ability to develop resistance to each new drug used against the disease. But in laboratory tests on animals, the parasite did not develop resistance to ELQ-300.

“These findings suggest that if the drug is eventually developed for human use, then it could enjoy a long, useful clinical life before resistance emerges in the field.”

Dr. Riscoe says the new drug seems to be more effective than other medicines now being used to treat people with the disease.

“ELQ-300 is about 30 times more effective at curing malaria in mice as compared to atovaquone -- a drug that’s in clinical use today.”

Researchers say ELQ-300 may cost less to make than other anti-malaria drugs and they say it may be effective in smaller amounts, or doses. They suggest it could be combined with another drug to cure malaria.

Now that tests on laboratory mice have been successful, researchers are preparing to test ELQ-300 in humans. 

Michael Riscoe spoke¹³ in a podcast to the journal Science Translational Medicine, which published his research. 

I’m Jeri Watson.

And that’s “As It Is,” our daily show in VOA Special English. Thanks to Mario Ritter and Jeri Watson for their reports.

1 malaria   

n.疟疾

参考例句：

• He had frequent attacks of malaria.他常患疟疾。
• Malaria is a kind of serious malady.疟疾是一种严重的疾病。

2 tuberculosis   

n.结核病，肺结核

参考例句：

• People used to go to special health spring to recover from tuberculosis.人们常去温泉疗养胜地治疗肺结核。
• Tuberculosis is a curable disease.肺结核是一种可治愈的病。

3 resistant   

adj.(to)抵抗的，有抵抗力的

参考例句：

• Many pests are resistant to the insecticide.许多害虫对这种杀虫剂有抵抗力。
• They imposed their government by force on the resistant population.他们以武力把自己的统治强加在持反抗态度的人民头上。

4 tumor   

n.（肿）瘤，肿块(英)tumour

参考例句：

• He was died of a malignant tumor.他死于恶性肿瘤。
• The surgeons irradiated the tumor.外科医生用X射线照射那个肿瘤。

5 marrow   

n.骨髓；精华；活力

参考例句：

• It was so cold that he felt frozen to the marrow. 天气太冷了，他感到寒冷刺骨。
• He was tired to the marrow of his bones.他真是累得筋疲力尽了。

6 donors   

n.捐赠者( donor的名词复数 )；献血者；捐血者；器官捐献者

参考例句：

• Please email us to be removed from our active list of blood donors. 假如你想把自己的名字从献血联系人名单中删去，请给我们发电子邮件。
• About half this amount comes from individual donors and bequests. 这笔钱大约有一半来自个人捐赠及遗赠。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 costly   

adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的

参考例句：

• It must be very costly to keep up a house like this.维修这么一幢房子一定很昂贵。
• This dictionary is very useful,only it is a bit costly.这本词典很有用，左不过贵了些。

8 rejection   

n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃

参考例句：

• He decided not to approach her for fear of rejection.他因怕遭拒绝决定不再去找她。
• The rejection plunged her into the dark depths of despair.遭到拒绝使她陷入了绝望的深渊。

9 promising   

adj.有希望的，有前途的

参考例句：

• The results of the experiments are very promising.实验的结果充满了希望。
• We're trying to bring along one or two promising young swimmers.我们正设法培养出一两名有前途的年轻游泳选手。

10 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

11 DNA   

(缩)deoxyribonucleic acid 脱氧核糖核酸

参考例句：

• DNA is stored in the nucleus of a cell.脱氧核糖核酸储存于细胞的细胞核里。
• Gene mutations are alterations in the DNA code.基因突变是指DNA密码的改变。

12 parasite   

n.寄生虫；寄生菌；食客

参考例句：

• The lazy man was a parasite on his family.那懒汉是家里的寄生虫。
• I don't want to be a parasite.I must earn my own way in life.我不想做寄生虫，我要自己养活自己。

13 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。