h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Surely homeopathic anti malarials would not be to prevent you from catching malaria but allow your body to fight of the malaria quickly and effectively and so become immune - the true test of the effectiveness would be to send the person back with no protection and see if he was immune.

I thought meliaria was one of thoughs rapidly mutating viruses, nd the only real natural way to become slightly imune it to have sickle cell...

-- DoctorMO --

Yeah, I don't think it is one of those were your immune system cvan do much.

just to put the matter straight malaria is caused by a parasitic protozoan organism not a virus.

there are I believe 4 known strains of the protozoa, with differing levels of danger to the human host.

malaria has an alternating host lifecycle - mosquito to man and back to mosquito.

There are numerous drug treatments for malaria, many of which are used as a prophylactic (taken prior to infection to provide protection) though all known strains of malaria are showing resistance to the older treatments (&/or they have too many or too serious side effects) of the newer drugs, the most used in europe is Lariam, though malaria is beginning to show resistance to this as well.

I am curious as to how a homeopathic treatment deals with a parasitic organism - can anyone help?

Lariam, what an original name.

I did thought it was a parasite rather than a virus. Some form of plant if I remember correctly.

Well it is a microscopic organism called a protozoa - srtictly speaking its neither a plant or an animal.

from my my dictionary:
any of a subkingdom (Protozoa) of chiefly motile and heterotrophic unicellular protists that are represented in almost every kind of habitat and include some pathogenic parasites of humans and domestic animals.

Protists include not only amoeabas, protozoans, but also colonial unicellular organism such as algaes, sponges etc.

looks about right, I thought it wasn't a virus, but I couldn't be sure, so what kind of structure is it? RNA? DNA? or is it some kind of self replicating chemical.

-- DoctorMO --

Lots of lovely malaria info on this site

http://martin.parasitology.mcgill.ca/jimspage/biol/plasmod.htm

I especially like the section on

"Black water fever, seen as dark red urine is caused by high levels of haemoglobin and breakdown products in the urine and may
also lead to kidney damage. At this stage the patients survival is unlikely."

Ooooh, sounds lovely.

-- DoctorMO --

A774100

The UK health service insists upon calling these treatments 'complimentary medicine', rather than 'alternative medicine' for this reason - they are best used alongside conventional medicines, rather than instead of them.

But Lariam in particular has a bad reputation for side-effects, so people are keen to avoid taking it. The person in my example was using the homeopathic anti-malarials as a prophylactic, not a treatment.

Gif

PS - that's UK/medical sense of the word 'prophylactic', obviously.

please explain string "prophylactic", English Defintion.

Complermentry Medicins are ment to make you feel better (or so what I've heard) and so make your body stronger to fix it's self,but some of the 'other' medicins do work. But thank you for the link to the Maliera info, could do with that knolage base.

-- DoctorMO --

Apparently in the US, 'prophylactic' means 'condom'.

I don't even want to think about how a homeopathic medicine could be used as a prophylactic in that sense ...

Gif

Well, I found it amusing.

ROFLMAO

A homeopathic condom.......................

that is kinda funny, because I thought it was about harmony with the body or some such? and I also thought that condoms were not what the bosy 'realy' wanted.

-- DoctorMO --

A prophylactic drug is one which can prevent the on set of a disease as well as treating the symptoms, a classic example is larium. Another is litium in manic depression (bi-polar disorder) where lithium will prevent the onset of manic/depressive cycles of behavior as well as treating acute attacks. Should point out that both larium and lithium are "dirty" drugs with lots of side effects.

I suppoes condoms were called prophylactics in the U.S. is because they can prevent both STDs and pregnancy.

I took Lariam for about 9 months and can vouch for side-effects.

I've never been on lithium though (twitch, mumble).

Gif

What side effects? I might need it if I'm going travelling.

I'm luky (or unluky as some would point out) that the worst side efect from a drug is from lactos, (and yes I've never been drunk)

all this to come ey?

-- DoctorMO --

Lithium when taken in sufficient quantities is usually fatal. That's where I come in ....