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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The new malaria vaccine offers long-term immunity against persistent parasites that infect hundreds of millions of people each year, a new study finds.
Most vaccines are designed to encourage the human body to respond to the pathogens responsible for the disease by creating antibodies that disrupt them. However, the new vaccine takes a different approach using a weak form of the common herpes virus (CMV), which affects most people do not cause the disease.
The new vaccine reduced the release of malaria-causing malaria parasites by the infected macaque by 75-80%, according to the results published in the January issue of One Plus.
"The problem with most vaccines is that their effectiveness is often short-lived," said lead researcher Klaus Froh, a professor at the School of Public Health at Oregon State University.
"The cytomegalovirus-based vaccine platform can create and maintain immunity to life and, through new research and developments, it can offer lifelong protection against malaria," he said.
Malaria is a serious, sometimes life-threatening disease caused by perceived parasites, which spread to humans through mosquito bites and can cause intense fever, chills, flu-like illness and, in the worst case cases, death.
Worldwide, 216 million people became infected with malaria in 2016, resulting in 445,000 deaths.
The research team designed small portions of the target disease in the cytomegalovirus (CMV) virus, which is already used in vaccines developed to fight HIV and tuberculosis, and which has been observed in people newly vaccinated (CMV). Its design produces T cells that can detect and destroy infected cells.
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