The efficacy levels of the new vaccine may be disappointing, but expections were not that high. This is nevertheless an important step towards compating Malaria. Key Facts from the World Health Organization:
- Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes.
- In 2010, malaria caused an estimated 660 000 deaths (with an uncertainty range of 490 000 to 836 000), mostly among African children.
- Malaria is preventable and curable.
- Increased malaria prevention and control measures are dramatically reducing the malaria burden in many places.
- Non-immune travellers from malaria-free areas are very vulnerable to the disease when they get infected.
World's first malaria vaccine on course for 2015
Excerpt:
Encouraging results from the longest and largest trial of a malaria vaccine could see the world's first anti-malaria jab approved by 2015. The disease infects more than 200 million people a year, and kills at least 660,000 – mostly children. The vaccine could be used for the first time in 2016.
"It's on that trajectory, and the plan is to file with the European Medicines Agency in 2014," says David Kaslow, vice president of product development at the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which supported development of the vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
A positive scientific verdict from the European agency, expected in 2015, would pave the way for African countries to approve it for use by 2016, says Kaslow, who presented the results in Durban, South Africa, at a major international conference on malaria…
Continue: World's first malaria vaccine on course for 2015 – health – 08 October 2013 – New Scientist.
The long war:
A new vaccine will help, but will not defeat malaria
Excerpt:
…The prospect of a vaccine is therefore exciting to patients and health experts alike. But developing one is difficult. Malarial parasites, though small and single-celled, are much more complex than the bacteria and viruses that are the usual targets of vaccines. To date there has been no successful vaccine against such a complex organism. Work on RTS,S has been going on for decades.
A case of malaria starts when a mosquito’s bite delivers parasites into a person’s bloodstream. These travel to the liver, where they hide, mature, multiply and eventually emerge back into the bloodstream to invade and destroy its red cells. The vaccine contains a protein found on the surface of the parasite, combined with an antigen for hepatitis B that prompts an immune response, plus an added immune-system booster. RTS,S seems to provoke antibodies and killer cells that attack the parasite before it leaves the liver.
A clinical trial at 11 sites in seven African countries shows RTS,S does indeed protect against malaria. But it does not work as well as researchers had hoped. The recent data show the effect 18 months after vaccination. In children (aged five to 17 months when vaccinated) it reduced the number of cases by 46%. In infants (aged six to 12 weeks) it reduced them by 27%. And its effect seems to wane. Earlier results showed efficacies after one year of 56% in children and 31% in infants.
These figures compare with the aspiration, set by a consortium of malaria experts in 2006, to have by 2015 a vaccine that was more than 50% protective…
Full article at The Economist >
Picture credit: Florida State: http://www.doh.state.fl.us/environment/medicine/arboviral/Malaria.html. Florida's statistics are higher than the WHO's; this might be due to the rates declining in recent years.
