A new study by Christopher Plowe and colleagues (University of Maryland School of Medicine) on a malaria vaccine used at a testing site in Mali calls into question whether the best vaccine was chosen to be tested at this particular site.The development of an effective malaria vaccine is not easy, in part because there are different strains of the Plasmodium parasite that causes the disease. The different strains carry different variants (alleles) of the genes encoding parasite components (antigens) used in test vaccines, which means that the parasites causing infection in a given location may differ from the ones used for vaccination. If this is the case, the immune response generated by the vaccine might be less effective or even ineffective. >>> Discuss This Story
