2024-02-02 11:00:00
Receive the magazine for only €5/month + National Geographic 2024 Agenda as a GIFT.
Novelty! Subscribe to Gredos’ Historians of Greece and Rome collection. First issue, Thucydides for only €4.99.
Within the framework of a meticulous clinical trial that included approximately 5,000 children, aged between 5 and 36 months, the effectiveness of an innovative malaria vaccine, called R21/MatrixM.
This scientific advance has achieved a significant decrease in symptomatic episodes of the disease, standing between 68 and 75% during the course of the year following its administration.
Malaria mosquitoes spread
The researchers responsible for this finding maintain that the cost of the vaccine will be affordablewhich holds the promise of considerable relief to alleviate the pain and death toll of malaria in regions of sub-Saharan Africa.
The findings corresponding to phase 3 of this study have been published in the prestigious journal The Lancet, marking a milestone in the fight against this devastating disease.
High efficiency
According to statements of Carlota Dobañohead of the Malaria Immunology Group at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), at SMC Spain: “the vaccine shows high efficacy in areas of seasonal malaria when it is administered just before the rainy months associated with high transmission of infection, and less effectiveness in places of less intense and perennial transmission.”
Detecting malaria: the key to a cure
The duration of the effectiveness of said vaccine still needs to be monitored to more extensively evaluate its impact on public health, as well as its effectiveness in areas of Africa where there is high malaria transmission and throughout the year.
The disease that kills one person every 30 seconds
Malaria is the most devastating disease for the human species, holding the dubious honor of being the deadliest pathology. This ailment is distinguished by being the only one among those caused by protozoa, that is, parasitic organisms of notable complexity.
Nowadays, The number of individuals who are besieged by this disease exceeds 800 million annuallythe result of the bite of female mosquitoes belonging to the genus Anopheles. Once the malaria pathogen enters the bloodstream, it begins an attack directed towards the liver, from where it orchestrates a strategy of invasion and multiplication within the host organism.
Malaria claims one life every thirty seconds, with children under five years old making up 75 percent of the victims. Unlike other diseases such as yellow fever, malaria is particularly harmful to the youngest and those whose immune systems are in a vulnerable state.
Although vaccines against malaria are being developed, a vaccine solution that offers full and definitive efficacy has not yet been found. The R21/MatrixM could finally be the first.
#Innovative #malaria #vaccine #shows #promising #results