According to Agence France-Presse, results of the latest clinical tests of the RTS,S were contained in a study released on Wednesday. The study, published in the British health journal The Lancet, said the tests involved the vaccination of 214 infants from malaria-infested villages in Mozambique with the vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals of Belgium two decades ago and a standard hepatitis B vaccine called Engerix-B.
The two vaccines were used on babies aged 10, 14 and 18 weeks to compare the effectiveness of RTS,S and Engerix-B. The result was that babies who received RTS,S shots were 65 percent less at risk of getting infected with malaria compared with the infants vaccinated with Engerix-B. Four babies died and 61 got sick, but RTS,S was ruled out as the cause.
Researchers noted in the study that the homes of all the babies who took part in the test were also provided with free, insecticide-treated bednets.
In the trial of the vaccine in 2004, RTS,S was found to be 45 percent effective on 2,022 Mozambican children aged one to four. The babies and children in both trials did not experience side-effects from the vaccine.
The AFP reported that the latest test results paves way for Phase III or final trials, which involve more subjects.
A vaccine undergoes a long and exhausting process of testing to ensure that it is safe and effective to the public. The trial of RTS,S began in 1992. Aside from GlaxoSmithKline, researchers from the University of Barcelona, Spain, from Mozambique's Health Ministry and Eduardo Mondlane University, and from the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative in Maryland participated in the clinical trial. RTS,S is made up of proteins taken from a young Plasmodium falciparum parasite, which causes malaria. The proteins are fused into a tried-and-tested hepatitis B vaccine to create RTS,S.
