A VACCINE against malaria would save hundreds of thousands of lives each year. Now it seems we鈥檙e much closer to finding one.
Infants in Mozambique who had been injected with the experimental vaccine RTS,S/AS02 were 65 per cent less likely to be infected with Plasmodium falciparum 鈥� the mosquito-borne parasite that causes malaria 鈥� than infants injected with a control vaccine, according to the first major trial of a malaria vaccine in 210 infants. Recipients were also 35 per cent less likely than controls to develop malaria itself.
鈥淚nfants injected with the malaria vaccine were 65 per cent less likely to be infected鈥�
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鈥淎 vaccine with an efficacy of 60 to 70 per cent would have a tremendous public health impact,鈥� says Joe Cohen, the researcher at GlaxoSmithKline who developed the vaccine. 鈥淚t could save hundreds of thousands of lives and prevent many millions of cases.鈥� The results were published online in The Lancet this week (DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61542-6).
鈥淚t鈥檚 very good news,鈥� says Pedro Alonso of the University of Barcelona, Spain, who led the trial. 鈥淓ffectively, it represents the first proof of concept that you can immunise infants against malaria.鈥�
The vaccine mimics a protein found on the surface of P. falciparum during the part of its life cycle when it can be injected into human blood by feeding mosquitoes, called the circumsporozoite stage. Primed by the vaccine, the babies鈥� immune systems produced antibodies and white blood cells to fight the parasite and stop it reaching the liver, where it would normally infect cells and multiply. Babies injected with the vaccine received three shots, the first given at between 10 and 18 weeks old.
The real test of the vaccine is yet to come, however. 鈥淣ext year we will start a trial in 16,000 kids in 10 sites in seven African countries,鈥� says Christian Loucq, director of the international Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which is backing the trials.
