Malaria vaccine is less effective than hoped

摘要

The first candidate malaria vaccine to reach phase III clinical trials is not as effective at protecting young African children against the disease as was hoped, according to the results of the RTS,S clinical trial published in The Lancet on 24 April 2015 (ref. 1). Early results published in 2014 found that the recombinant protein vaccine RTS,S/AS01 was more effective in children than infants, reducing malaria cases in children by almost a half and by just over a quarter in infants at 18 months after vaccination2. The latest results show that the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes over time, although this can be attenuated by a booster dose to reduce a third of cases in children at four years from vaccination.