ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2010) — A new vaccine to prevent the deadly malaria infection has shown promise to protect the most vulnerable patients—young children—against the disease, according to an international team of researchers led by the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and the Malaria Research and Training Center at the University of Bamako in Mali, West Africa.
In a new study of the vaccine in young children in Mali, researchers found it stimulated strong and longlasting immune responses. In fact, the antibody levels the vaccine produced in the children were as high or even higher than the antibody levels found in adults who have naturally developed protective immune responses to the parasite over lifelong exposure to malaria.
“These findings imply that we may have achieved our goal of using a vaccine to reproduce the natural protective immunity that normally takes years of intense exposure to malaria to develop,” says Christopher V. Plowe, M.D., M.P.H., professor and chief of the Malaria Section of the CVD. Dr. Plowe, is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist.
In areas of the world such as Africa, where malaria is particularly rampant, the young are most vulnerable to the disease since they have not built up the same natural immunity as adults. A child dies of malaria every 30 seconds, according to the World Health Organization. There are about 300 million malaria cases worldwide each year, resulting in more than one million deaths, most of them African children.
Information: www.sciencedaily.com . Adapted from materials provided by University of Maryland Medical Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS., Journal Reference:Thera MA, Doumbo OK, Coulibaly D, Laurens MB, Kone AK, et al.
Safety and Immunogenicity of an AMA1 Malaria Vaccine in Malian Children: Results of a Phase 1 Randomized Controlled
Trial. PLoS ONE, 2010; 5 (2): e9041 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009041,
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