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Link: 50% effective malaria vaccine developed
A study on over 15000 children in 7 African countries shows GlaxoSmithKline's anti-malaria vaccine halves the risk of contracting malaria. The trials were run on children between 6 and 12 weeks old, and between 5 and 17 months old.
Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/oct/18/malaria-vaccine-save-millions-children
Full paper: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1102287
From skimming the paper, this looks sound. GlaxoSmithKline both developed the vaccine and paid for the study, but that's standard. The disclosure forms don't show anything fishier.
There are ways this could go wrong. GlaxoSmithKline says they'll make it cheap (probably for PR) but this is not sufficient to ensure availability. This could also increase total risk by replacing bed nets, or by making other diseases worse.
Thoughts on the research? Comments on effects? Plans for wild celebration?
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Comments (8)
Malaria needs people as part of its life cycle.
If 50% effective vaccine saturates an area, malaria could decline by more than 50% as fewer humans pass it to mosquitoes.
Good news, time for cautious optimism and continued diligence (as ever)!
Remains to be seen how long immunity lasts (early trials showed immunity waning after 12-18 months), frequent re-vaccination wouldn't be viable in most of the world's malaria-endemic areas.
This vaccine provides immunity against the sporozoite (first life stage of Plasmodium), so it will only be effective against new infections. I believe there are other vaccines in the pipeline that target multiple life stages of the parasite.
Note that there was an increase in meningitis incidence in the experimental group. This could be random, a result of the placebo vaccine choice, or something else.
There have been good results pairing bed net distribution with vaccination campaigns for other diseases, it would be great to see that kind of program develop.
Beautiful to see another nail in death's coffin.
Malaria also makes children tired and sickly for a fraction of every year. Not having malaria will improve quality of life and help education for a much larger population even than the population that would have died from malaria.
I looked for some references (10 percent absenteeism due to being ill, one fourth sick during an 11 week period, not so high in some other studies) but my impression anecdotally is that fighting malaria makes you very tired, which might be harder to quantify.
Plans for a restrained English nod of approval. "Good chaps!"