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Wednesday 18 Mar 2015 - 10:39 Makkah mean time-27-5-1436  Malaria carried by mosquitoes (Getty Images) Melbourne (IINA) – A team of international researchers are a step closer to finding a vaccine for malaria, after discovering antibodies in the human immune system that help fight the disease in its early stages.
The team from the Burnet Institute in Melbourne collaborated with researchers from universities in Australia, Britain and Kenya to develop the research over a 10-year period.
The study, published in the medical journal "Immunity", concluded that the human immune system can trigger a response that calls upon proteins in red blood cells. Professor James Beeson, head of the Burnet Institute's Biomedical Research Center, said that this development could be used in creating a vaccine for the disease.
“What we discovered is that the antibodies needed to recruit other proteins in the blood, known as a complement, to help them to coat the malaria organism,” Beeson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Wednesday.
“By working together, these two things are a double-hit that stops malaria from infecting red blood cells.”
The finding means a vaccine could be created to rapidly induce this type of immune response and prime it to fight malaria upon infection, especially in children, who are the most victims of the disease.
Malaria, a parasitic disease spread by mosquitos, is complicated to study, especially compared to illness caused by viruses and bacteria.
Malaria, a parasitic disease spread by mosquitoes, is one of the world's leading cause of death. In Africa alone, more than 600,000 people die each year as a result of infection. The research was a huge step towards eliminating the disease worldwide, said Beeson.
AB/IINA
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