Comments on: Experimental Malaria Vaccine Could Start Saving Lives by 2011

By: Mathilde

Mathilde — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:14:53 +0000

The big risk with vaccines like these, who are ‘incompetent’(they cannot give full protection against a natural infection) is that it can promote more virulent strains to survive better in the population. So, people who are then unvaccinated have even more serious problems.

By: Mel Thornburg

Mel Thornburg — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:47:46 +0000

It is well known those same populations also have at least 11% infection rate for Borreliosis (for which they do not even test for)and HIV is out the roof. As for the evasion issue-citing resistance to antimalarials. It is no wonder and falsely proclaimed in those populations who do not have any resistance to anything. It is something to watch closely.

By: Eliza Strickland

Eliza Strickland — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:34:54 +0000

You make some good points, Sonia. As you note, the vaccine doesn’t prevent infection, instead it triggers a strong antibody response against the parasite once it has entered the bloodstream. But that’s how all vaccines work — a measles vaccine doesn’t prevent the virus from getting into the body, it teaches the immune system how to destroy the virus when it sees it.

But this malaria vaccine is a much trickier business, it’s true. Researchers really don’t know why some kids who got vaccinated still came down with malaria; study coauthor Kevin Marsh told Nature News that “no one really knows how RTS,S works.” I’ll be interested to see in the coming years whether this vaccine really can make a dent in infections, or whether the parasite finds a work-around.

By: Sonia Shah

Sonia Shah — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:32:45 +0000

The RTS,S vaccine doesn’t protect against infection, per se, but against getting sick from the infection. It’s a crucial distinction, somewhat obscured in this piece, because it means that the malaria parasite, even under universal vaccine coverage, will continue to survive and evolve.

Given that malaria parasites have figured out how to evade every drug we’ve thrown at them, sometimes in just a matter of a couple years, wouldn’t this vaccine, if implemented, be useless in a short while, too?