mRNA vaccine yields full protection against malaria in mice:
Scientists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and Naval Medical Research Center partnered with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Acuitas Therapeutics to develop a novel vaccine based on mRNA technology that protects against malaria in animal models, publishing their findings in npj Vaccines.
In 2019, there were an estimated 229 million cases of malaria and 409,000 deaths globally, creating an extraordinary cost in terms of human morbidity, mortality, economic burden, and regional social stability. Worldwide, Plasmodium falciparum is the parasite species which causes the vast majority of deaths. Those at highest risk of severe disease include pregnant women, children and malaria naïve travelers. Malaria countermeasures development has historically been a priority research area for the Department of Defense as the disease remains a top threat to U.S. military forces deployed to endemic regions.
A safe, effective malaria vaccine has long been an elusive target for scientists. The most advanced malaria vaccine is RTS,S, a first-generation product developed in partnership with WRAIR. RTS,S is based on the circumsporozoite protein of P. falciparum, the most dangerous and widespread species of malaria parasite. While RTS,S is an impactful countermeasure in the fight against malaria, field studies have revealed limited sterile efficacy and duration of protection. The limitations associated with RTS,S and other first-generation malaria vaccines have led scientists to evaluate new platforms and second-generation approaches for malaria vaccines.
Journal Reference:
Katherine L. Mallory, Justin A. Taylor, Xiaoyan Zou, et al. Messenger RNA expressing PfCSP induces functional, protective immune responses against malaria in mice [open], npj Vaccines (DOI: 10.1038/s41541-021-00345-0)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @11:52AM (6 children)
Malaria is one of these terrible tropical diseases. A successful vaccine against it is akin of having successful vaccine against measles or whooping cough in the less tropical areas of the world. mRNA looks like an great tool at tackling these things now, something that was simply unavailable few years ago.
The question is will this prove successful technology against HIV? Cancers? And maybe soon we will be able to have designer vaccines against individual cancers? Medical future looks exciting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @12:06PM (2 children)
1. Cure HIV and a few other diseases
2. Gratuitous sex
3. ???
4. Profit!
When you say cancers, you just mean HPV and other viruses that cause cancer?
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday June 22 2021, @12:27PM
S/he'd be wrong to say that.
2019 - advanced stages of melanoma - Unlocking the potential of vaccines built on messenger RNA [nature.com]
In the news today - advanced melanoma First patient dosed in BioNTech Phase II trial of mRNA cancer vaccine [clinicaltrialsarena.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @12:55PM
Since with mRNA vaccines you can directly program the protein making machinery of your cells, you are no longer bound to using some viral vector. The difference is like programming your computer with an input device vs. throwing electrons on a HD hoping to flip the right bits and then testing and repeat. The process is greatly sped up and errors are removed.
Having said that, I mean all cancers, and not viruses that cause cancers,
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/clinical-trials/intervention/mrna-based-personalized-cancer-vaccine-mrna-4157 [cancer.gov]
https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/first-patient-dosed-in-biontech-phase-ii-trial-of-mrna-cancer-vaccine/ [clinicaltrialsarena.com]
https://molecular-cancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12943-021-01335-5 [biomedcentral.com]
mRNA vaccines could be the end of chemotherapies
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @08:44PM
Oh look, 2 back-to-back "vaccines are good, see?" propaganda stories from the small-hat tribe who owns the industry that, in partnership with other Jew-run industries, gets to force their poison on people without suffering any consequences. Right on schedule, as people are dropping like flies maimed and killed by the vaccines. And the best part is, pilots are required to be vaccinated, so now we'll have entire planes full of people dropping like flies.
Who knew that in the age of the Nuremburg Code that conducting Dr. Mengele-style experiments are actually A-okay if it's Jews are doing it?
(Score: 1) by jost1 on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:10AM (1 child)
Don't need no vaccine. Ivermectin works for both covid and malaria.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32613-8/fulltext#back-bib11 [thelancet.com]
(Score: 1) by jost1 on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:21AM
It's safe!
https://www.wwarn.org/news/news-articles/researchers-call-access-ivermectin-young-children [wwarn.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @12:49PM (3 children)
Is that number off by an order of magnitude or two? This is less than the flu.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @01:01PM
No. The dead are mostly children under 5. The flu is skewed towards the elderly. The number of elderly in malaria areas is not so great.
The problem with malaria is that the parasite can remain dormant in your body for lifetime and screwing up your quality of life. This is why if you were ever sick with malaria, you are disqualified from blood donations. And the costs associated with it represent huge chunks of GDP, maybe only governmental corruption can surmount the societal costs of malaria in affected areas.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday June 22 2021, @01:03PM
A lot of children die of malaria [soylentnews.org], very few of flu.
The sick adults tax the system more than the flu, by the simple length of time one gets to suffer from malaria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @01:57AM
More people used to die in the past. The Lancet reported (according to Wikipedia) that the death toll in 2004 was 1.8 million, in 2010 1.2 million.
I'm guessing it must be China's help that has brought down deaths to only 405k.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 22 2021, @01:21PM (2 children)
Have those mice had the chance to vote on whether they want this vaccine? Anti-vaxxer mice UNITE! Follow the orange mouse!
MAGA!: Mouse Anti-vaxxers, Great Again!
;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:10PM
Worthless comment. Keep your insanity to yourself.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 22 2021, @07:01PM
Psst: it's actually a pasty-gray mouse dunked in orange dye. And it's limping around in circles trying to bite its own tail, a futile effort since it's massively obese. I don't think they're going to follow it anywhere...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @01:53PM (16 children)
But it's still great news.
Hopefully they will learn the most important lesson from the coronavirus - quit dawdling. People are dying while doctors do paperwork. Corona showed that we can go from discovering the disease to curing it in a year (actually they still spent most of that time on testing, the actual vaccine was ready in a week, although it would have taken a while to get production ready no matter what).
Get this through safety trials in a few months and then start giving it to people. Coronavirus changed so many things, let's hope it changes medical culture too.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @04:35PM (15 children)
Meanwhile, back to reality. We're, to this very day, discovering new *short-term* side effects of the COVID vaccines including heart-related issues. Multiple teenagers have now suffered severe adverse reactions to the vaccines, including at least one death in an age group with a statistically non-existent mortality rate from COVID.
Oh yes, and 29% [telegraph.co.uk] of those who died of the latest strain in the UK, were fully vaccinated. Another sizable chunk had received at least one vaccination shot. The current prevailing hypothesis is that the "vaccines" administered only months ago, have already lost their efficacy.
But hell yeah, let's start racing this junk out with even less testing. Can you imagine how much profit it would generate?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @04:41PM
But yea, make sure the vaccine is good first. The coof vaccine is more of an inoculation against symptoms. Malaria might be the real deal or give you ball cancer. The guy who cured himself of lactose intolerance never had side effects. It's going to vary greatly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday June 22 2021, @08:15PM (11 children)
You don't get to pound the podium about 1 reported death on one side while handwaving thousands of deaths away as insignificant on the other side.
Also notable, your link suggests that the delta variant is affecting a much higher portion of young people.
Also, still fair to say that the vaccination is making death less likely according to the figures in your link.
Note that the mRNA vaccines seem to be more effective against the delta variant than the AZ vaccine common in the UK.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @06:34AM (10 children)
There haven't been thousands, because I was speaking specifically of youths in this case. Here [cdc.gov] are the CDC's latest COVID death figures.
Since the outbreak a total of 46,977 people aged 0-17 have died. And exactly 322 of those cases involved COVID in any way, shape, or form. Due to the way COVID deaths are tracked any individual who had diagnosed with or presumed to have COVID, is counted as a COVID death. So a 400 pound 16 year old diabetic who dies of heart failure, but had COVID, is counted as a COVID death. If you scroll down a bit, you can see preexisting conditions. The CDC inexplicably obfuscates the exact figures by swapping from 0-17 years to 0-24 year olds, but we can at least get a glimpse of it. Our 322 COVID deaths includes up to 114 people with diabetes, 73 people with cancer (malignant neoplasm), 140 heart attacks, etc.
There are near, if not literally, 0 people in the US aged 0-17, without major preexisting conditions, who have died of COVID itself. The health status of the kids who are dying of the vaccines has not yet been revealed (to my knowledge), but the vaccines are already having a brutal effect on this age group.
----
And for what it's worth, I am not "pounding the podium." My position on the vaccines is simple: if you think they are good value given your chances of catching COVID and your odds of having a negative outcome from it, go for it. If you don't? Don't. A 70 year old shouldn't even think twice about getting vaccinated. For them the risk of the vaccine is relatively low, long-term side effects (if any) have little relevance given their low life expectancy, and COVID has a substantial risk for them. It's a no-brainer. But the exact opposite is true for minors (except perhaps those with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc). COVID is harmless for them, the vaccines are not harmless, and long-term side effects (if any) could potentially destroy what might otherwise be a long and fruitful life.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday June 23 2021, @08:44AM (9 children)
Since you were also referring to facts and figures from telegraph.co.uk that indeed referred to the UK, it seems completely reasonable for me to include figures from outside the U.S.
While I do not favor forcible vaccination, it is notable that refusing to be vaccinated places OTHER PEOPLE at risk as well.
Interesting that you claim COVID is harmless to young people after posting a link that states that the delta variant is harming young people. You are also ignoring morbidity. I have seen reports of teen athletes ending up with long COVID and so having trouble getting out of bed. I would consider that harm. Let me guess, you blame the co-morbid athlete's foot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @03:54PM (8 children)
Completely fair point on me first discussing UK data and then segueing over to the US. Here [ons.gov.uk] are the deaths for COVID in the UK by age. A total of 20 people below the age of 20 have died of COVID in the UK (as of January 28), so the numbers there are even more extreme than in the US. It looks like in their more recent data they've started clumping together some giant 15-45 year old range simply because COVID doesn't kill many people in these age ranges.
As for other people, if somebody is an individual at high risk from COVID due to health conditions, age or other such factors - and for some reason they cannot be vaccinated, then going outside into society is obviously an extreme risk. I do not find the near zero benefit I would offer to this specific rare individual in this specific rare scenario to be a compelling reason to change my own behavior. The reason I'm not considering 'long covid' is because it's mostly entirely unquantified but is clearly exceptionally rare.
Don't take my lack of desire to vaccinate to be a lack of concern about the virus. I'm behaving more rationally than most in terms of avoiding the virus, and that remains the plan. Keep in mind that in the US after 15 months of a virus, mostly with no vaccines, and tens of millions of people flagrantly violating any sort of containment effort, "only" about 10% of people ended up infected, or had such minor cases to the point that they never received a formal diagnosis. So the odds of you not getting the virus are excellent if you engage in reasonable due diligence.
Of course since this virus seems to be following the pattern of most flu-like viruses we've had over the past century, expect a huge surge of infections to start occurring around September/October. On the bright side, that will also probably be the ultimate peak of the virus. Oddly enough the vaccines don't really seem to be changing this trend of following historical patterns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @05:31PM (5 children)
Long COVID is exceptionally rare? No.
It is a total crapshoot. I completely lost my sense of smell (and I was a human bloodhound before) and am estimating I have gained like 5% of it back in almost 3 months. A bit fatigued and some light headedness. I got terrible headaches for a solid month after, but thankfully, that's nearly all gone.
COVID didn't even come close to killing me, but these neurological after effects are real.
I met with a friend of my wife's and her lungs got scarred as a result. Now, you may get only mild symptoms that resolve quickly, and if you catch it, I hope that is the case. But people can get messed up from it and you wouldn't even know with them standing next to you unless you asked them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @05:51PM (4 children)
Having said that, I will guess that the odds of long COVID *might* be less for younger people (I am middle-aged), but again, it is a crap shoot. I personally do not think that for young children the reward outweighs risk until more is known.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday June 24 2021, @01:46AM (3 children)
It is notable that the delta variant seems to be affecting younger people and seems to be creating a new surge in U.S. states with low vaccination rates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:10AM (2 children)
Now you're just making things up, or have been misled. Here [worldometers.info] is a table with the vaccination rates in the US by state. Here [worldometers.info] are the latest infection numbers. There's little to no correlation between the numbers of new infections, and vaccination rates. Many states with high vaccination rates are having negligible new cases. Many states with low vaccination rates are having negligible new cases. Some states with high vaccination rates are having a surge. Some states with low vaccination rates are having a surge.
The efficacy, or lack thereof, the vaccines should be able to be tested in about 4 months. As this virus seems to be following the exact same historic pattern as previous flu-like plagues, we should expect to see a sharp surge in cases starting sometime around October. And, in fact, this should be where we finally hit "peak covid". If the vaccines are providing any meaningful macro-level benefit, it will become apparent then.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday June 24 2021, @09:34AM (1 child)
Your links are identical and have no vaccination data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @03:03PM
That is slightly problematic isn't it! Here [usafacts.org] are the rates per state. Scroll down for a more readable table presentation.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday June 23 2021, @06:12PM (1 child)
"long covid" is not "exceptionally rare", it is estimated at around 10-20% of cases. From: https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/themedreview/living-with-covid19-second-review/ [nihr.ac.uk] -- "The ONS (January 2021) estimated that 20% of all people in the UK who had tested positive for Covid19 exhibit symptoms for 5 weeks or longer and 10% exhibit symptoms for 12 weeks or longer. "
It is also not trivial, not just "fatigue" or "post viral", but systemic chronic illness affecting multiple organs and severely affecting ability to do things such as going to work (you know, that "sort of critical for the economy" thing).
https://www.dovepress.com/the-conundrum-of-long-covid-19-a-narrative-review-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-IJGM [dovepress.com]
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248802v3 [medrxiv.org] (" 45.2% (42.9% to 47.2%) reported requiring a reduced work schedule compared to pre-illness")
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4470 [bmj.com] (young low-risk people with multiple organ impairment)
From latest uk official reporting: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/4june2021 [ons.gov.uk]
- prevalence greatest in people aged 35 to 69
- 1million people in uk
- " long COVID symptoms were adversely affecting the day-to-day activities of 650,000 people, with 192,000 of these individuals reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been limited a lot"
so that's 1million still with symptoms, 650k still with adverse affect on everyday activities, and 200k of those were severely limited.
That's a whole lot of people with a whole lot of (probably complex involving multiple organs / specialists) health problems and some with significant care needs, all from Covid. We can add them to the backlog of other stuff caused by overfilling our hospitals with Covid. Oh, and many of them can't work either, because Covid. And yet still there are people saying we should open up and spread it to "protect the economy"...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @04:43AM
Carpet bombing links found with a quick google search for your bias-confirming terms of preference is not going to be compelling to people who do not already share your belief. If you're genuinely interested in the subject, research it, find the one thing that you think is most compelling, and share.
Ideally you're looking for several things in your pick:
1) Publication in a journal that has some degree of selectivity
2) Peer reviewed
3) Clearly made effort to control as much noise as possible to ensure clear causality.
#3 is pretty huge since medical publication has also fallen in for the click-baiting world of today. Did you know that adverse affects [openvaers.com] to the vaccines have included more than 358,379 events - including 47,837 individuals needing urgent care and 5,993 deaths?
That is a completely accurate statement, but there is a reason I don't reference such things as "proof" of the dangers of vaccines. It's because VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System) only handles the reporting of events. And when you speak of things happening at scale, many events can be expected to happen independently. Did the vaccine cause the heart attack, or death, or did the individual take the vaccine and then have an unrelated heart attack and/or die for whatever reason? You need to control for this so much as possible before you can start to say. And so one can confirm (or challenge) their own biases with these data, but stating things definitively based on these data is premature.
I stopped perusing studies on long covid after finding there was near zero effect to control for outside factors, which is suggestive of a desire to create a publishable paper, than a desire to create a relevant paper. For instance they will simply ask people if they are having symptoms of long covid (which can also be caused by a gazillion other factors) and then attribute that as a case of long covid. That's deeply disingenuous and bad science, yet it still gets published now a days.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday June 23 2021, @06:21PM (1 child)
> The current prevailing hypothesis is that the "vaccines" administered only months ago, have already lost their efficacy.
Also note that many places vaccinated the most vulnerable first, so their vaccines were the longest ago, _and_ many of them will have existing illnesses and more likelihood of poor immune system / vaccine response.
But anyway, why is efficacy loss in a few months that surprising? We need a new flu shot _every_ _year_, and that is because flu only comes round about once a year.
Covid natural immunity is a few months at best (look what happened in Manaus in Brazil - full second wave only months after >70% had already had it).
This virus is mutating about half as fast as flu, but comes round more than once a year - it may eventually settle down to a fixed seasonal/annual pattern but hasn't yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:00AM
The reason is the same that I put vaccines in quotes. Because of the connotation of such. People associate vaccines with the vaccines you take as a child that tend to provide protection ranging from years to a lifetime. I do not think most people realized when injecting themselves that most expected the protection offered would be so incredibly brief, especially given that there's every reason (based on historical trends of previous flu-like plagues) to expect COVID to last for at least another year or two.
Another factor in play here is that these vaccines are showing a rather large number of adverse effects, and have been causally linked to numerous deaths, while thousands remain under investigation. These effects are rare, but vastly more common than in other vaccines. And so having to vaccinate people 3-4 times a year with two shots per vaccine is going to result in a scaling of these risks.
And the final point I'd make is the dangers of vaccines that are marginally effective. Vaccines that do not enable one's body to effectively and rapidly kill off the virus are creating a breeding ground for mutations. It's like taking antibiotics until your symptoms disappear. It creates an evolutionary pressure against the main strains, while also giving them a fertile land to mutate. Note that the increasingly rapid rate of major mutations only occurred following widespread deployment of vaccines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @09:02PM
ohhh! let's not teach them to drain swamps and outlaw even more DDT. this should yield some nice dividends when malaria invested population goes crying to clubbermint for "free" malria vacines (they gotta import from listed crumpeny)
also on a side note: we now have weapons AND armour in biotech.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday June 23 2021, @05:22AM (3 children)
There are several efficacy numbers in the paper, depending on dose, schedule, and lipid coat.
The highest I saw was 88%, which may not be "full protection" but which is an unprecedented miracle for a malaria vaccine. If it works equally well in humans it will be a great achievement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @06:42AM
Not really.
1) How long does the protection last? The prevailing hypothesis for the declining effectivity of the COVID vaccines against the delta variant (29% of those who died of the delta variant in the UK were fully vaccinated, a sizable chunk of the remainder had at least one shot) is that they protection offered simply waned after an extremely brief period of time. Malaria is primarily an Africa issue, and they have 1.1 billion people (Sub-Sahara) that are extremely spread out in extremely low-income regions. If the viruses don't offer extremely long-term protection, they're worthless.
2) Will weakly effective vaccines spur mutations? It's only after widespread deployment of vaccines that COVID began to rapidly mutate. And that's predictable. Vaccines that don't effectively enable you to kill the virus, instead working only to prevent symptoms, are quite analogous to taking an antibiotic up until the point that you feel better. It creates a perfect breeding ground for mutations since the primary strain is not effective, yet you are not killing it entirely off.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @11:20PM (1 child)
You do have to love the headline's "full protection" contrasted to the lead author on the paper's "high levels of protection."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @05:14AM
Just wait for the article citing this article that now changes it to "Malaria has been cured."