In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites.Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.it shows that scientists may finally be on the right track to developing an effective vaccine against one of mankind's top killers.(http://www.usnews.com/articles/science/2009/07/30/flying-needles-mosquitoes-deliver-vaccine-through-bites.html)A vaccine that uses modified live parasites just entered human testing.The new study "reminds us that the whole malaria parasite is the most potent immunizing" agent, even though it is harder to develop a vaccine this way and other leading candidates take a different approach.
Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, mostly children under 5 and especially in Africa. It's more of an in-depth study of the immune factors that might be able to generate a very protective type of response," said Dr. John Treanor, a vaccine specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York, who had no role in the study.
few facts
A mosquito can detect a moving target at 18 ft away
Lay up to 300 eggs at a time, fly across 150 miles in their lifetime, range from sea level to altitudes as high as 10,800 feet (3,600 meters), develop from egg to adulthood in 4 to 7 days
The average life span of a female mosquito is 3 to 100 days. the male lives 10 to 20 days
No comments:
Post a Comment