A group of children in Tanzania who are naturally immune to malaria are helping scientists to develop a new vaccine.
US researchers have found that they produce an antibody that attacks the malaria-causing parasite.
Injecting a form of this antibody into mice protected the animals from the disease.
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For me, this raises more questions. How many children are immune? Why hasn't this been discovered sooner? Malaria has been around for millions of year and has evolved into the formidable disease it is today, so how are these kids immunities going to last? I realize it is still early in the investigation, but people are going to think this connotes a discovery of a vaccine when it just opens the door for a study. Don't get me wrong, it's great and very optimistic, but putting this information out as fast as they did could be in danger of creating false hope for the public. Because it was several different children, each immunity could be unique or specific to each individual kid, therefore making it difficult to pinpoint the gene or DNA strand or antibody that actually prevents malaria.
its nice that they want to help instead of being selfish
ReplyDeleteIt's great that a vaccine is being researched to help, however hopefully more research also goes into helping children from those areas. Some children that are naturally immune to malaria are also unfortunately more prone to sickle-cell. We need to help them too. It's a two way street.
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