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Malaria Vaccine, Via Mosquito
CodeShark writes "The AP is reporting that mosquitoes have been used for the first time to deliver anti-malarial vaccine through their bites. According to this article the results were crystal clear: 100% of the vaccinated group acquired immunity, everyone in the non-vaccinated control group did not. Those in the control group and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later, the vaccinated group did not. Malaria kills nearly a million people per year, mostly children."
Well, I read the article (sorry) and it's actually nothing to do with causing mosquitoes to spread a vaccine: the "vaccine" is regular malaria, and the treatment consists of letting people get bitten (and therefore exposed to the parasite) while giving them a drug which stops them actually getting malaria.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
The "vaccine" is the parasite itself... oh just RTFA.
... whether or not you agree with the method of delivery or not, this is good news. Thus far there has been no *vaccine* for malaria, merely drugs to take while you're exposed to the risk of catching it. Unfortunately, at least one of these has undesirable long term side-effects...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Damn. Informed consent to malaria infection.
The summary text is completely misleading vs. the article text. The mosquitoes don't "deliver" a vaccine. A combination technique is used, involving an existing anti-malarial drug and repeated exposure to the parasites via mosquitoes, to cause natural immunity to develop, essentially controlling a known path to malaria immunity. The article indicates this approach isn't usable on a practical scale, yet is important because:
"This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product, but a way to show how whole parasites can be used like a vaccine to protect against disease, said one of the Dutch researchers, Dr. Robert Sauerwein.
The article does mentions separate work to commercialize a related approach involving weakened malaria parasites.
It's not a matter of personal sacrifice, it's a matter of getting it past human subjects review. My wife's run ordinary social-science studies in the past, you have to jump through ridiculous hoops just to ask people questions.
And yes, the volunteers are heroes, even if all we get out of this is knowledge. (If you read the NEJM article, the process is a bit involved -- it takes weeks, you need a strain of malaria known to be well-treatable with existing drugs, it requires a little stable of infected mosquitos.)
I read it, and it is a vaccine.
From Wikipedia, bold by me.
A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains a small amount of an agent that resembles a microorganism. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.
from tjer article:
"This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product"
It is not produced like a vaccines are ready for commercial use. In fact it may never be anything but a 'study aid' to learn more about getting a commercially available product.
"The concept already is in commercial development. A company in Rockville, Md. â" Sanaria Inc. â" is testing a vaccine using whole parasites that have been irradiated to weaken them, hopefully keeping them in an immature stage in the liver to generate immunity but not cause illness."
so, yes this concept is being used as a vaccine, just not for malaria.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
OK, UNDERSTAND the fine article.
The only place where mosquitoes are involved here is that they're exposing the volunteers to mosquitoes to infect them with parasites that are weakened (in their body) through quinine. That part, that is, using mosquitoes to infect the people with parasites, is the part that's not commercially viable... the company in Rockville is using externally weakened parasites... weakened OUTSIDE the body by radiation... no mosquitoes involved.
Presumably because areas with Malaria problems are poor, really fucking poor, as in they've never seen a dollar. That makes distributing a vaccine difficult, since you can't have the locals pay for it, nor do they have a good infrastructure for the delivery even if the Gates foundation or the like picks up the tab.
This method isn't really practical for the same reasons, but TFA mentions a live vaccine that could conceivably be used the same way, and cheaply.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
I grew up in Central African Republic and have had malaria once, and also had dozens of relapses. Malaria stays in your blood and you are at risk for a relapse even after you have recovered with or without medicine. Go server in the US military and contract Malaria while you are overseas on assignment and you will get an extra 600 check each month because it is considered a permanent disability.
Well the vaccinated group will never be vulnerable to malaria again...
Says who? Because it is a new study they have not been able to see how long the immunity remains. Also they used mosquitoes infected with Plasmodium falciparum which is one but not the only parasite which causes malaria. Immunity also presupposes it won't evolve.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I can't believe how many people deny that this is a vaccine. Administering an infectious agent to develop immunity while preventing or mitigating the actual infection (by the vaccine) is exactly how a vaccine is defined. This is a prophylactic active vaccine. It doesn't matter by what means the mitigating effect is achieved. In the original cowpox vaccine, it was achieved by not using cowpox itself, but the related smallpox which is much less dangerous but similar enough to trigger the same immune response and thus convey immunity to cowpox as well. In other cases, dead or weakened infectious agents are used for the vaccine. The only difference here (apart from using an animal vector instead of a syringe) is that the weakening of the infectious agent occurs only after injecting it, by the cloroquine that is being administered.
Had Malaria 8 times. If you know you have it and get treatment (pills or a shot) early, it isn't even as bad as a cold.
Had a resistant form of Malaria once. It sucked balls because treatment would only work for a few days and then the symptoms would come back... harder. Took some stronger medicine and was fine.
Malaria is not a big deal for healthy adults who can sense the symptoms. It is a HUGE deal for children who can not always understand the way they feel, or the elderly who have weak immune systems.
Sleep is for the weak.
Slashdot editors don't like their work, apparently.
These are better articles:
Mosquitoes against malaria?. Quote: 'In what AP describe as a "daring experiment" with "astounding" results, researchers found that ten people subjected to mosquito bites three times over three months whilst taking the drug chloroquine gained apparent immunity against malarial mosquito bites a month later.'
Effective Vaccine For Malaria Possible, Study Shows. Quote: "This unique method of immunization allowed the human immune system to direct its response to eliminating the P. falciparum parasite at the earlier, liver stage of its life cycle. (Chloroquine kills the parasite at the later blood stage.)"
No, it's not the "usual money-making-trough-actually-not-healing-but-making-addicted-scheme."
You take the anti-malaria drugs for a few months while getting bitten by mosquitos with real malaria. After a few months, you stop taking the drugs, because your body has used that time to develop an immunity to the parasites. From that point on, you are immune to malaria for the rest of your life, with no further drug costs.
You may want to get your cholesterol checked. Apparently, mozzies are more attracted to people who process cholesterol efficiently and don't have a lot stacked up in their blood.
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