A single shot that could provide months-long protection against malaria has proven effective and safe in a small, early clinical trial of adults.
The shot, which contains monoclonal antibodies, would primarily be intended for infants and children in countries with the most malaria transmission, the team who conducted the trial says. These young children have the highest risk of dying from severe mesin destilasi .
In the clinical trial, 15 of 17 participants who received the monoclonal antibodies did not become infected after being exposed to mosquitoes with malaria in the lab, the researchers report in the Aug. 4 New England Journal of Medicine. All six people who did not receive the medicine developed infections.
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The clinical trial tested different doses and delivered the medicine intravenously or as a shot. Based on a computer model of how the medicine is taken up, distributed and then cleared by the body, the researchers estimate that one shot may protect against malaria for six months.
“What we’ve always been looking for is some sort of intervention that will prevent infection reliably and for as long a time as possible,” says Miriam Laufer, a pediatric infectious disease doctor and director of the Malaria Research Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Ideally, Laufer says, that would be a highly effective vaccine that provides years and years of protection. A new malaria vaccine has recently become available, but it is only modestly protective against the disease, and that protection wanes rapidly (SN: 12/22/21). The vaccine requires four shots.
