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The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

blogs.sciencemag.org

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Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#11

Post by Exmoor »

eloff wrote: post #5

What blows me away is in a study group of 734 infants, which benefited from maternal antibodies against malaria, 717 were infected by malaria in the first year of their life. That's nearly 100%, in the first year since birth. That's devastating. The vaccine is showing 77% efficacy in trials in Burkina Faso. That's an ongoing pandemic that makes covid-19 look like a case of the sniffles. Malaria deaths peaked around 9…

> Malaria deaths peaked around 930,000 a year in 2004, and is around 600,000 a year now

Your link does a good job showing this, but for those who don't click and scroll down it's probably worth mentioning that the vast majority of those deaths are in central Africa. So it's not just a lot of deaths, but it's a really significant portion of the population and, as you said, mostly children.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#12

Post by robbmorganf »

In this trial, shots were given in May-August to children a minimum of 5 months old. Assuming children that have not reached 5 months by August (or say October) can't be vaccinated in time for the seasonal peak of Malaria, should we recommend the safest time to have a child is roughly Dec-May? Therefore, couples should be trying for a child Mar-Aug if they want to reduce mortality risk to malaria.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#13

Post by icandoit »

chmod600 wrote: post #2

Are any of the mosquito extinction approaches being seriously tried? Genetic engineering, etc.?

This group Oxitec released some in Florida:

https://www.oxitec.com/en/news/florida-keys-mosquito-control...

They previously released some in Brazil:

https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journa...

those results?:

...in the Brazilian city of Indaiatuba found that Oxitec’s mosquito suppressed disease-carrying Aedes aegypti by up to 95%* in urban, dengue-prone environments following just 13 weeks of treatment, as compared to untreated control sites in the same city.

*95% was the high 2-week rolling average and the individual weekly high was 98%; the highest 4-week rolling average was 92%.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#14

Post by BiteCode_dev »

eloff wrote: post #5

What blows me away is in a study group of 734 infants, which benefited from maternal antibodies against malaria, 717 were infected by malaria in the first year of their life. That's nearly 100%, in the first year since birth. That's devastating. The vaccine is showing 77% efficacy in trials in Burkina Faso. That's an ongoing pandemic that makes covid-19 look like a case of the sniffles. Malaria deaths peaked around 9…

And the worst thing is: malaria is easily curable, as malaron is not only preventive, but fully kill the plasmodium in the liver cells. Despite that, we don't provide the drug to them.

It would cost a fraction of what we spend on research for a vaccine, but no cigar.

Of course, there is the argument that we risk developing resistant bugs. But the truth is, if suddenly all mosquitoes were moved magically to the US, you would see the drug massively used for everybody without a second though.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#15

Post by UncleOxidant »

chmod600 wrote: post #2

Are any of the mosquito extinction approaches being seriously tried? Genetic engineering, etc.?

Would mosquito extinction even be a good idea? There would be substantial impacts to ecosystems if mosquitos were completely eliminated.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#16

Post by Footkerchief »

eloff wrote: post #5

What blows me away is in a study group of 734 infants, which benefited from maternal antibodies against malaria, 717 were infected by malaria in the first year of their life. That's nearly 100%, in the first year since birth. That's devastating. The vaccine is showing 77% efficacy in trials in Burkina Faso. That's an ongoing pandemic that makes covid-19 look like a case of the sniffles. Malaria deaths peaked around 9…

Infants can also be infected before their first year of life, via vertical transmission: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4259075/

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#17

Post by User23 »

bolangi wrote: post #8
chmod600 wrote: post #2

Are any of the mosquito extinction approaches being seriously tried? Genetic engineering, etc.?

Widespread supply of mosquito nets treated with an insecticide is one of the more successful measures.

The most successful measure was carpet bombing the USA with DDT for years[1]. Most people don't know this now, but malaria used to be endemic in the USA as far north as the border with Canada. DDT's environmental persistence is obviously a double-edged sword, but it made the eradication possible.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#18

Post by abfan1127 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #15
chmod600 wrote: post #2

Are any of the mosquito extinction approaches being seriously tried? Genetic engineering, etc.?

Would mosquito extinction even be a good idea? There would be substantial impacts to ecosystems if mosquitos were completely eliminated.

yes. mosquitos do quite a bit of pollination.

Re: The most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered

#19

Post by mr_overalls »

eloff wrote: post #5

What blows me away is in a study group of 734 infants, which benefited from maternal antibodies against malaria, 717 were infected by malaria in the first year of their life. That's nearly 100%, in the first year since birth. That's devastating. The vaccine is showing 77% efficacy in trials in Burkina Faso. That's an ongoing pandemic that makes covid-19 look like a case of the sniffles. Malaria deaths peaked around 9…

That's just an astounding incidence rate. That kind of selective pressure makes the reason for the sickle cell mutation in hemoglobin more obvious.

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/biology/index.html

> Inheritance of this mutated gene from both parents leads to sickle cell disease and people with this disease have shorter life expectancy. On the contrary, individuals who are carriers for the sickle cell disease (with one sickle gene and one normal hemoglobin gene, also known as sickle cell trait) have some protective advantage against malaria. As a result, the frequencies of sickle cell carriers are high in malaria-endemic areas.

> . . .It was found that that the sickle cell trait provides 60% protection against overall mortality.

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