If true, this is the best news of the year, if not of the decade. Via Yahoo! News UK, an AFP report: New Japan malaria vaccine cuts infections 'by 72%'. Excerpt:
A team of Japanese researchers say they have developed a vaccine that cuts the risk of malaria developing in humans by more than two-thirds.
The disease, which is carried by parasite-bearing mosquitoes, kills around 650,000 people each year, mostly African children under five, according to the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO).
While there are a number of preventative medicines already in use, scientists say drug-resistance is growing.
Researchers from Osaka University have developed a dry powder vaccine, called BK-SE36, from a genetically-modified protein found inside the parasite, which they mixed with aluminum hydroxyl gel.
"The vaccine's effect is greater than those hitherto reported of any other antimalaria vaccines," a statement issued this week said, adding BK-SE36 is expected to reduce markedly the number of deaths caused by the mosquito-borne disease.
The vaccine has already undergone trials on adults in Japan and was also tested in a malaria-endemic area in northern Uganda between 2010 and 2011. Neither study found any safety problems.
A follow-up study of people in Uganda, aged between six and 20, found the vaccine lowered the number of people infected by malaria by 72 percent.
The findings were published on Tuesday on the online US science journal PLOS One, according the statement.
BK-SE36 far outperformed the 31 percent decline achieved by another new vaccine developed by a British company, the statement said.
Professor Toshihiro Horii, who led the study, told Jiji Press he wants to put BK-SE36 to practical use "in five years after conducting a clinical trial on infants between zero and five, who account for the bulk of malaria deaths."
