If this treatment gets approved for use in human medicine it could change things around. Good thing, since malaria is a serious problem in many localities and there have been recent rises in cases of malaria in some of them.
"Combining different malaria vaccines could reduce cases by 91 per cent" |
Imperial College London News (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/186786/combining-different-malaria-vaccines-could-reduce/)
QuoteUsing two experimental anti-malarial vaccines, which work in different ways, can greatly reduce the number of malaria infections in animal studies.
Experimental vaccines, which independently achieve 48% and 68% reductions in malaria cases, can achieve 91% reduction when combined.
Presently, each vaccine is at a different stage of human trials, and there have not been efforts to combine them. However, a team led by Imperial College London have now tested the effectiveness when using the two types of vaccine together.
The study, published today in the journal eLife (https://elifesciences.org/articles/35213), used genetically altered mouse parasites that express proteins expressed on the human version of the malaria parasite. The research was funded by the PATH's Malaria Vaccine Initiative and the Medical Research Council (MRC), including researchers at Imperial's MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling.
Lead researcher Dr Andrew Blagborough, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "This is the first direct evidence than combining vaccines of different types significantly improves their efficacy in terms of reducing malarial burden.
"Reaching a potential 91% reduction in cases would have a huge impact on public health because the vaccines could be effective in areas where malaria is more prevalent."
[Continues . . . (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/186786/combining-different-malaria-vaccines-could-reduce/)]
This rings a bell, maybe not malaria but another disease that was susceptible to a multi-pronged attack?