Terrie Taylor's Research
Some recent papers — with many collaborators
NIH Awards MSU Research $8.4 Million to Develop First Malaria Treatments
While the world waits for a vaccine against the ancient disease malaria, Terrie E. Taylor is working to save the lives of children who are currently afflicted by the deadliest form of the disease. Taylor, MSU University Distinguished Professor of internal medicine and an osteopathic physician, will use an $8.4 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health to build on her groundbreaking researchthat was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015. Taylor and her team discovered children with cerebral malaria develop massively swollen brains that are forced out through the bottom of the skull and compress the brain stem. The pressure causes the children to stop breathing and die. Read more in MSU Today.
Terrie Taylor's Presentation at World Malaria Day
Terrie Taylor's talk, The Pathogenesis of Fatal Cerebral Malaria: A Few More Pieces of the Puzzle, described her work to characterize and treat this deadly complication among young children in Malawi. In this area of Africa, the burden of disease of malaria falls largely on children between the ages of one and three. Children who develop cerebral malaria experience seizures and often become comatose. Death is usually related to respiratory arrest, although the exact process that leads to death in these children has until recently been somewhat of a mystery. See the full presentation.
New malaria tool shows which kids at greatest risk
Researchers at Michigan State University have identified a test that can determine which children with uncomplicated malaria are more likely to develop cerebral malaria, a life-threatening form of the disease. Read more.
Uncovering how cerebral malaria damages the brain
Building on more than a quarter century of work in Malawi, work which includes the first systematic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, Dr. Karl Seydel, a Michigan State University researcher and colleague of Dr. Taylor’s, is traveling to neighboring Zambia to help characterize patients who will undergo MRI scans on a stronger MRI machine. The comparisons between images from patients in Malawi and images from similar patients in Zambia will illuminate our understanding of how malaria damages the pediatric brain. Read more.
Taylor receives national honor for work with malaria in Malawi
For her years of dedicated work in Africa studying and treating malaria, Michigan State University's Terrie Taylor is being honored with a 2011 American Medical Association Foundation Excellence in Medicine Award. Read more.