Africa ( Commonwealth Union) _ Results of clinical studies revealed that, compared to either the RTS,S vaccine or seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) alone, the vaccine-drug combination reduced clinical malaria episodes, including cases of severe malaria and deaths from malaria in young children, by nearly two-thirds.
Instances of highly seasonal malaria transmission can benefit from combining the RTS,S/AS01E (RTS,S) malaria vaccine with antimalarial medications for up to five years, revealed the conclusions of a significant study that was published in the medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Institute des Sciences et Techniques and Institute de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé, Burkina Faso; the Malaria Research and Training Centre, University of Sciences, Techniques and Technologies of Bamako, Mali; and PATH, Seattle, Washington, United States of America (USA) were partners in the phase-three study, which followed more than 5,000 kids for a total of five years.
The study also demonstrated that RTS,S was equally effective—or “non-inferior”—to SMC in preventing malaria in highly seasonal situations.
The results of the five years of follow-up are in agreement with those of the initial three years, which were reported in 2021. That year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) decided to recommend the RTS,S vaccine for use in areas with moderate-to-high malaria transmission, including areas with highly seasonal malaria or areas with perpetual malaria transmission with seasonal peaks. These data played a role in the decision.
The potential for seasonal vaccination to offer young children a high level of protection during their first five years of life—a period when this protection is required—is confirmed by these recent data.
Prof. Brian Greenwood, a member of the LSHTM research team, stated that in addition to the study’s results, which are astounding, children who received the RTS,S-drug combination and also used bed nets likely had greater than 90% protection against malaria episodes throughout the study. This emphasises how crucial it is to guarantee that people have access to a variety of malaria prevention strategies in order to reduce the enormous burden of the disease and deaths caused by malaria in these highly seasonal environments.
