(credit: US Army Africa)
After decades of trying to zap malaria once and for all, researchers are buzzing about a new experimental vaccine against the mosquito-transmitted infection. If results from early trials hold up, the vaccine could one day significantly help slap down malaria’s infectious toll, which hit 214 million documented illnesses and more than 400,000 deaths in 2015 alone.
In a phase I trial—the stage at which scientists test safety and dosage levels in a small number of people—the experimental vaccine spared up to 55 percent of participants from getting sick after they were bitten by malaria-loaded mosquitoes. For some of the test subjects, that protection lasted a year, researchers reported in Nature Medicine.
Those stats may seem like low bars to call a vaccine "promising," but the results actually beat out other vaccine candidates tested so far. Previously, the most well-studied malaria vaccine, called RTS,S, fared even worse in similar tests. It only protected 22 percent of healthy adults subjected to disease-toting mosquitoes, and the protection was tested up to just five months. Nevertheless, RTS,S made it to a phase III trial—the stage at which scientists test efficacy in large numbers of people. In that trial, the vaccine did slightly better, keeping up to 36 percent of kids from getting documented cases of malaria for up to two years. European regulators subsequently approved the use of that vaccine in 2015.
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