(Commonwealth Union)_In a continent that has killed over 620,000 people in just 2020 alone and infected more than 241 million especially children under five, malaria may have finally met its match.
In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine states that this new tool against malaria, the result of years of research, involved a completely different approach to previously tested methods. The treatment is a large monoclonal dose of laboratory manufactured malaria-fighting antibodies and will be effective for six months.
In earlier approaches, the efficacy of the vaccines was built on a dependence on the immune system to produce sufficient infection-blockers after the vaccination was given. However, according to the University of Sciences, Techniques and Technologies in Barnako Mali which experimented with the antibody treatment in the villages of Kalifabougou and Toronto, earlier treatments did not sufficiently protect enough people against this deadly mosquito-borne disease.
Previous research pointed out that people are bitten by infected mosquitoes at least twice a day during malaria season.
330 adults in Mali were administered the antibody or a placebo and the findings documented, resulting in an 88% efficacy rate. After the initial experimentations, the antibody was eventually developed at the US National Institutes of Health. However, since the initial antibody was administered by IV, which made it challenging to deliver on a large scale, the findings itself was a means of triumph for the researchers who then worked on a shot-vaccine version which have been tested on infants, children and adults.
Malaria is transmitted by the female of the Anopheles mosquito which uses the blood meals for production of its eggs. With this antibody, the parasite’s life cycle is broken as it targets immature parasites before they enter the liver. It is in a person’s liver that these parasites mature and multiply.
Plans are to eventually use the antibody shot as a tool against malaria, together with other preventive methods including malaria pills, vaccines and mosquito nets. On an estimate, the antibody could cost about USD 5 per dose.
