BPRC reveals results of fifteen-year study
The best time to introduce new breeding males into a group of rhesus macaques is when the males are at the peak of their strength. Such introductions have the greatest chance of success in groups with many females, from a maximum of three different families. These are only two of the conclusions from a fifteen-year study conducted by behavioural experts at BPRC.
When you’re ill, you go to see a doctor. Sometimes the doctor needs to send your blood to a specialist laboratory. If you’re a sick monkey in a European zoo, then there’s a strong chance that the vet will send your blood to BPRC for analysis.
The Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV), transmitted by mosquitos, is relatively unknown in Europe but it can still pose a serious danger to both humans and farm animals on our continent. The development of better and safer vaccines is urgently required to prevent outbreaks.
Other primates are a lot like us, including where their weight is concerned. One individual tends to be plump while the other remains slender. How does this work with primates? And what can we at BPRC do to reduce the incidence of overweight in the colony? These are the questions we are attempting to answer during a study of overweight among the macaques living at BPRC.
Prevention is better than cure, certainly where HIV and AIDS are concerned. After all, once the HIV virus enters the body, it will remain there forever. Not even the constantly improving medication for curbing the virus can prevent this. What effective medication can do is prevent AIDS from developing and ensure that the patient is no longer able to pass on the virus. However, successful treatment requires intensive medical care.
Together with researchers from the US, BPRC has made an important discovery in the quest to find new ways of treating malaria. They've found a protein that is key to the growth of malaria parasites, offering new possibilities for developing tests for drug research.
On 30 April last, Prof. Jaak Vossen passed away at the age of 81. Prof. Vossen worked at the Leiden University Medical Center as a paediatrician from 1968 and as professor of Paediatrics with a chair in paediatric immunology from 1979 to 2002.
Precisely in the 2019 World Immunization Week, on 23 April, the malaria research community announced hopeful news (in Dutch). The news marked the roll-out of a large-scale pilot with the first malaria vaccine. ‘The vaccine should provide partial protection to children in Malawi against the deadly parasite.’
BPRC has already made great strides in the development of alternative research methods. Now our experts have come another step closer to this objective, with the engineering of an animal-free method to detect impurities in new types of medicines – impurities that can cause dangerous side effects.
Not every runny nose means you have flu. It's only after you've actually contracted the flu virus that we call it flu. During an average flu epidemic in the Netherlands, this happens to about half a million people. The majority of them recover within a couple of weeks, but some people can develop very serious complications. In the Netherlands, people in risk groups can be vaccinated against flu, but the current flu vaccine is under pressure – literally and figuratively.
