New malaria vaccine demonstrates high levels of protection in initial trials

Xinhua News Agency, London, July 2 (Reporter Zhang Jiawei) American researchers recently published a report in the British journal Nature that they have developed a new type of malaria vaccine using active Plasmodium and preventive drugs, which are in small-scale clinical trials.
Demonstrates a high level of protection effectiveness
.

Malaria is a parasitic disease caused by the parasites of Plasmodium parasites in the human body.
It is mainly transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito
.

In the vaccine clinical trials involving dozens of healthy adult volunteers, the volunteers were injected with the weakened P.
falciparum "sporozoite" (spore-like parasite), a dose of pyrimethamine or chloroquine, the latter two The drugs can kill parasites that enter the liver and enter the blood stage respectively
.

The study found that for volunteers who were injected with malaria sporozoites combined with pyrimethamine, if they were infected with the same parasite as the malaria parasite used in the vaccine 3 months later, then the high-dose vaccine can provide up to 87.
5 % of the protective effect ; If infected with Plasmodium heterospecies after 3 months, the protective effect of the high-dose vaccine can reach 77.
8%; In the case of being injected with malaria sporozoites combined with chloroquine, this high-dose vaccine will infect Plasmodium xenans after 3 months 100% of the protective effects were achieved on the 6 volunteers
.

The researchers said that the above-mentioned malaria vaccines showed a high level of protection against heterogeneous Plasmodium
.

"Nature" website quoted Pedro Alonso, director of the World Health Organization's Global Malaria Project, as reporting that malaria vaccine development has been neglected for a long time, and this research provides important information on how to immunize against malaria