According to a study by the Portuguese Institute of Molecular Medicine, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, a vaccine for malaria - which kills more than 400,000 people worldwide every year - may have been discovered.
The potential vaccine was in the testing phase and, according to the institute, cited by the New Journal, the conclusions are very positive: the vaccine, called PbVac, when applied to the objects of study has proved to have a protection capacity against malaria in the order of 95 percent.
In a statement, the Portuguese institute explained that the vaccine was given to 24 people and that these people, although not fully protected, showed "a very significant reduction - of 95 percent - of liver infection of immunized volunteers compared to control individuals, not immunized.
This new discovery "paves the way for further development of PbVac and similar vaccines, towards the development of an effective vaccination strategy against human malaria," the institute considers. In addition, this potential vaccine enables the scientific community to have new ways of working to create "an effective vaccine against malaria.
The study was led by the Portuguese Miguel Prudêncio, and also had the collaboration of other scientists, including Robert Sauerwein of Radbound University Medical Center, and Perry van Genderen of Erasmus MC, both in the Netherlands.
