A vaccine against the parasitic disease malaria cut illnesses by more than half in field trials and could be safely given with other childhood inoculations, two studies have reported. The vaccine, which will begin a third and final phase of clinical trials early next year, could become the first to protect children from malaria, which kills nearly 1 million people worldwide every year.
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Malaria vaccine may be available for use in 2012
RTS,S more than halved malaria cases in trials in Tanzania and Kenya, two studies have reported.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, December 10, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 62 words Type of Material: Correction
Malaria vaccine: An article in Tuesday's Section A about promising results from trials of an experimental malaria vaccine omitted the full name of a scientist who predicted that the vaccine, RTS,S, could be available as soon as 2012. He is Joe Cohen, vice president for vaccines for emerging diseases at GlaxoSmithKline. Cohen has worked on RTS,S since its inception 22 years ago.
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The studies, published online Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, were reported at a New Orleans meeting of tropical medicine researchers and were hailed as a significant breakthrough in the fight against one of the most intractable and deadly infectious diseases.
If the phase three trials are successful, it would be "an extraordinary scientific triumph," said Dr. W. Ripley Ballou, deputy director for vaccines and infectious diseases for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped fund the research.
"But more importantly," Ballou added, "it could save millions of children's lives."
Malaria kills nearly 1 million people each year and sickens about 2 million others, according to estimates from the World Health Organization. Most of the deaths are among children younger than 5 in sub-Saharan Africa, the population that the vaccine targets.
The vaccine RTS,S was developed by Belgium-based GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals with support from the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, a global nonprofit consortium that works with pharmaceutical companies.
In the first study, conducted in Kenya and Tanzania, 894 children ages 5 months to 17 months were inoculated either with the three-dose experimental malaria vaccine or a rabies vaccine as a control group. In the eight-month follow-up period, researchers found that children receiving RTS,S had 53% fewer diagnosed cases of malaria -- 38 episodes compared with 86 among recipients of the control rabies vaccine.
In the other study, conducted in Tanzania, the vaccine was given to 340 infants at 8, 12 and 16 weeks old, along with vaccines against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and Haemophilus influenzae B without lessening the safety or effectiveness of the vaccines. The ability to administer the vaccine as part of already established immunization programs is important for countries where health workers, clinics and roads are in such shortage that delivering a drug can be almost as challenging as developing one, researchers say.
