LONDON – Scientists have made important progress in the quest for a malaria vaccine, showing for the first time that childhood shots can prevent nearly one-third of cases and slash the risk of severe, life-threatening attacks by almost two-thirds.
Experts say the findings, outlined this week in The Lancet medical journal, provide robust evidence that the dream of developing a vaccine that will get babies through the most vulnerable period of infancy could become a reality by the end of the decade.
Researchers have been working on a malaria vaccine for more than 20 years, but until now none of the candidates showed promise. If this research bears fruit, it would be the first human vaccine against a parasite.
Specialists agree that, at least for the foreseeable future, there is no prospect of a vaccine that would wipe out malaria like the smallpox vaccine did for smallpox, or even provide lifelong immunity.
However, a vaccine that would turn the disease into a mostly mild infection would make a huge dent in the effort to control malaria, which kills a child every 30 seconds and poses a threat to half of all people on the planet. About 500 million episodes of malaria occur every year, mostly in the developing world. It is the leading killer of children under 5 in sub-Saharan Africa.
The vaccine, which GlaxoSmithKline Bio has been developing for 20 years, was tested in 2,022 children aged 1 to 4 in Mozambique, where the mosquito-borne disease is endemic.
The researchers, led by Dr. Pedro Alonso at the University of Barcelona, found infection in 30 percent fewer children in the vaccine group than in the comparison group. The vaccine also reduced the risk of getting sick by 30 percent, the risk of getting repeated attacks by 30 percent, and cut by 58 percent the chance of developing severe malaria.
Within the comparison group, four children died of severe malaria, while none of the children who got the vaccine died of malaria.
The vaccine was most impressive in children under 2, in whom the disease is most dangerous. The vaccine reduced the number of severe malaria episodes in that age group by 77 percent.
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