Hope for malaria vaccine within five years

A vaccine against malaria, which kills more than one million people every year, could be available within five years after extensive trials have shown that it provides significant protection for infants and young children.

The vaccine, known only by its codename RTS,S, is the most promising to emerge from 20 years of research and has already demonstrated its efficacy in adults and babies in the Gambia and Mozambique.

The latest trials, in Kenya and Tanzania, have shown for the first time that the vaccine can be administered as part of the standard immunisation programme, without interfering with vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and meningitis, and still provide protection. This will make delivering it much easier and less costly across Africa and has boosted researchers' hopes of developing an effective weapon against one of the world's worst killer diseases. A final trial involving thousands of children across Africa is planned for next year, if regulatory approval can be obtained.

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About 500 million episodes of malaria occur every year, mostly in the developing world. The disease is caused by a parasite transmitted by the female anopheles mosquito and is the leading killer of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the Tanzanian trial, the vaccine reduced infection with malaria over six months by up to 65 per cent in babies under one, who are most vulnerable to disease. A total of 340 infants were included who each received three doses at eight, 12 and 16 weeks. In a separate trial involving almost 900 older children in Kenya and Tanzania, aged five to 17 months, a slightly different version of the same vaccine reduced cases of malaria requiring hospital treatment by 53 per cent.

The results were presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in New Orleans and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The vaccine is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, in partnership with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), set up with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Christian Loucq, director of the MVI, said: "The study results strongly show that our investments in developing malaria vaccines are beginning to pay dividends. We are closer than ever before to developing a malaria vaccine for children in Africa.

"History has shown that vaccines are the most powerful tool to control and eliminate infectious disease. Clearly the world urgently needs a safe and effective vaccine to win the war against this terrible disease."

The latest studies provide the answer to critics of the project who warned it was wrong to proceed to a large-scale, final trial without testing the vaccine in a number of African countries. Simon Draper, a researcher on malaria vaccines at the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, said: "This latest result shows we are getting there step by step. The vaccine RTS,S is the leading candidate and has shown a measure of efficacy in children. On the malaria vaccine we are slowly beginning to win."

An editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine says further trials are necessary with the vaccine in areas where malaria transmission is more intense. It says the vaccine is the first to reach such an advanced stage of development, adding: "It is, indeed, a hopeful beginning."

Deadliest disease: Deaths in a year

*Nigeria 25,000

*Dem Republic Congo 96,000

*Uganda 43,000

*Ethiopia 41,000

*Tanzania 39,000

*Niger 32,000

*Kenya 27,000

*Burkina Faso 26,000

*Ghana 25,000

*Mali 24,000

(Estimated figures, 2006)

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