The sting of a mosquito bite is something most people try to avoid. But scientists in Europe have come up with an unusual method for delivering a vaccine to human beings. In a recent study, live mosquitoes were used to deliver live malaria parasites through their bites!
Malaria
Malaria is a deadly disease that kills close to a million people every year, mostly young children. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) one child dies from malaria every 30 seconds.
Malaria is caused by the Plasmodium parasite and is spread when infected mosquitoes bite. The immature parasites travel to the liver, mature and multiply. Once the parasites enter the blood stream, people get sick. But if people are exposed to malaria several times, they can slowly develop immunity to the disease. The drug chloroquine has been successful in killing the parasites during the bloodstream phase.
The Mosquito Bite Study
The study, which took place at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, included 15 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 45. 10 people were in the vaccine group and five in the control group. All 15 were given chloroquine for a three-month period and exposed to mosquito bites once a month for three months.
The vaccine group was exposed to malaria-infected mosquitoes while the comparison group was exposed to non-infected mosquitoes. One month after the entire group stopped taking the drug, all 15 volunteers were bitten by the infected mosquitoes. None of the 10 people in the vaccine group developed parasites but all five in the control group did!
The study shows that scientists may be on the right track when it comes to developing an effective vaccine. While chloroquine is used to prevent and treat malaria, two other drugs are also used to treat malaria where chloroquine is not effective. These drugs have been found to be growing in resistance. Finding an effective vaccine for this disease is critical.
The study, Protection against a Malaria Challenge by Sporozoite Inoculation, was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Photo by Jim Gathany under the public domain license.
Very interesting. Thanks for passing on information on this study.
The study is encouraging and hope to see more of that kind,
Regards
John Paul Byagamy
Uganda