Antibiotics could protect malaria sufferers
A study on mice release Wed 14th July 2010 has revealed that high risk malaria sufferers could be cured by taking antibiotic drugs.
According to British, Kenyan and German scientists, the drugs could provide protection against malaria infections, by allowing healthy people to develop immunity against malaria parasites.
However, the drug is only recommended to be given to sufferers who have been taking protective medicines before being infected with the disease.
Whilst testing the drug on healthy mice, scientists found that their bodies were able to produce a vaccine-like immunity against re-infection.
The results also showed that even when the mice were given a low dosage of the antibiotics, almost all of them were protected from the dangerous malaria parasite.
The drug is set to benefit high risk malaria regions such as the savannah areas of Mali and Burkina Faso, where the transmission occurs for a short period, but is extremely deadly.
Researchers have identified that the drugs could work effectively in humans by causing a cellular defect in malaria parasites in the person’s liver, which would then block the parasite’s fatal conversion from the liver stage to the disease-causing blood stage.
The blocked parasite inside the liver would then prompt the body to develop a strong immunity against the disease, like a vaccination.
Scientists have revealed that they will not be turning the drug into a vaccination, but using it as another form of medicinal treatment against malaria.
British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is also running their own tests to provide immunisation from malaria. The drug maker is expected to see results from its prototype, Mosquirix, by 2011.
Malaria has been the focus of attention in the UK after singer Cheryl Cole contracted the disease, while holidaying in Tanzania, earlier this month.
An estimated one million die from malaria each year, most of them children living in Africa, where a child dies of the disease every 45 seconds, according to the World Health Organisation.
The disease is caused by Plasmodium parasites, which are spread by the bites of infected Anopheles mosquitoes.
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