According to research a malaria vaccine has shown promising results. The vaccine still in early stage clinical trials.
Researchers found the malaria vaccine could protected 12 out of 15 patients from the disease.
The methods will involves injecting live that could weakened malaria and needed to be given in high doses. This research lead by Dr Robert Seder from the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, in Maryland. The result has been published in the journal Science.
Malaria Vaccine – Mosquitoes bites
Malaria has been known a deadly disease. Exposure to mosquitoes treated with radiation can protect against malaria. However to become a malaria vaccine it takes more than 1,000 bites from the insects over time to build up a high level of immunity. It is making it an impractical method of widespread protection.
A US biotech company called Sanaria has taken lab-grown mosquitoes, irradiated them and then extracted the malaria-causing parasite (Plasmodium falciparum). It is all under sterile conditions. The malaria vaccine candidate is called “PfSPZ” . It may get an easy name after this.
The researchers has make trial to 57 volunteers whom never had malaria before. 40 volunteers received different doses of the vaccine while others not. They all exposed to the malaria-carrying mosquitoes and the participants not given any vaccine became infected with malaria. There is no malaria vaccine on the market for yet.
Another vaccine effort under way is the ” RTS,S” . At its phase III showed 31 percent effectiveness in young infants and 56 per cent in older babies and toddlers. –
According to Regina Rabinovich, a malaria expert and scholar in residence at Harvard University the results are “encouraging”. However, she said the researchers “need to figure out how to replicate with a scalable technology”.
There are currently about 20 malaria vaccine candidates in clinical trials. According to the WHO, there were an estimated 219 million cases of malaria in 2010 and 660,000 deaths has been records.