HuluDola

15/11/2021

Can we finally wipe out malaria with a vaccine 37 years in the making?
Efforts to make malaria history have had huge success in recent years. Now, there’s hope that the long-awaited RTS,S vaccine can go the last mile
Update on 6 October 2021: The world’s first malaria vaccine, known as RTS,S, was today recommended by the World Health Organization for general use among children in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions with moderate or high rates of malaria. It was previously used only in large-scale trials.

“We longed for it to come,” Janet Mula told me, recalling her reaction to hearing that scientists were developing a vaccine against malaria. Mula, a nurse I met while travelling in rural Kenya, has seen the devastation caused by this disease first-hand. Each year, it sickens more than 200 million people globally, killing at least 400,000. The vast majority of cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, with the biggest burden falling on younger people. “Malaria causes many complications for children – anaemia, organ failure, jaundice, liver complication,” says Mula.

That could soon change, however. While most of the world is focusing on new vaccines for the coronavirus, thousands of Kenyan children are finally receiving a longed-for malaria vaccine, 37 years after development on it started. Since 2019, Kenya, Ghana and Malawi have been taking part in a pilot programme coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO). If it is successful, the vaccine will be rolled out to infants across Africa. As this went to press, trial results of another vaccine developed by the University of Oxford suggested it was 77 per cent effective.
Some hope these vaccines will eventually help to eradicate malaria entirely. Every year on 25 April, World Malaria Day, the WHO assesses the progress made in combating the disease – and it has been considerable. But eradication would be a massive achievement: it has only ever happened with one human disease, smallpox. “Eradicating smallpox – it’s a wonderful story,” says global public health consultant Desmond Chavasse. “But we so nearly failed. The world nearly lost its determination to do it.” When it comes to malaria, even with a new vaccine, if action isn’t fast, we may miss our chance.

The parasites that cause malaria have been around for at least 30 million years. They probably started infecting humans tens of thousands of years ago, in Africa and, by 10,000 years ago, were decimating nomadic societies as far away as Asia. Today, malaria is caused by five species of Plasmodium parasites – Plasmodium falciparum being the most deadly – all of which are spread to humans via mosquitoes. Although malaria is endemic in 87 countries, 95 per cent of cases occur in just 29 countries in Africa. Nigeria seems to be by far the most severely hit, accounting for 27 per cent of known infections and 23 per cent of deaths overall. In 2007, the World Bank estimated that malaria costs Africa $12 billion a year in treatment and lost productivity – that figure is probably higher now.

15/11/2021

The controversial new clinical trials that promise faster results
Standard clinical trials used to test new medicines are slow and cumbersome. The pandemic has shown that a new kind of trial is far quicker, but is it reliable enough?
HUNDREDS of years ago, if you had a pain, a cough or a fever, an apothecary might prescribe you a tincture or – joy – a restorative course of leeches. Thankfully, medicine has come a long way since then. It is by no means perfect, but hospitals, drugs and healthcare have made our days inestimably more comfortable.

Much of this is thanks to that bastion of science, the clinical trial, which tests whether a medicine or treatment is safe and effective. Evidence from such trials is considered the gold standard, and over the years it has helped us sort the quackery from the cures. It might be surprising to hear, then, that a growing number of doctors think the way we test medicines needs an overhaul.

For all their strengths, clinical trials often take years to deliver a verdict. This drawback was exposed during the covid-19 pandemic, when we desperately needed treatments for a new disease. Doctors were forced to use quicker methods of assessment, and at this juncture, it seems they paid off. “We were able to achieve in weeks what would have otherwise taken years,” says epidemiologist Martin Landray at the University of Oxford.

If we can get robust answers about medicines in a faster way than standard clinical trials can, surely we are ethically obliged to do so. Some say yes: helping more people more quickly must be a good thing. Others worry that rushing medicines into use has got us into trouble before. Whether there really are speedier, more reliable ways of doing clinical trials is rapidly becoming one of the most critical questions in medicine. …

15/11/2021

Are vegan meat alternatives putting our health on the line?
Veganism is typically equated with healthy eating, but today’s factory-produced fake bacon, sausages and burgers could be tarnishing the halo of a plant-based diet. New Scientist investigates
DONALD Watson was born in Yorkshire and spent much of his youth on his uncle’s farm. But rather than making him feel at ease with breeding animals for food, the realisation that these “friendly creatures” went for slaughter horrified him. He became a vegetarian in 1924, aged 14. Two decades later, with his wife and four friends, he coined the word vegan from the first and last parts of the word vegetarian, and founded the UK Vegan Society.

Watson’s diet was filled mostly with nuts, apples, dried fruit, vegetables and, when wartime rations allowed it, lentils. Fast-forward to today, and Watson would have been astonished at the wealth of vegan-friendly offerings. Browse the aisles of supermarkets in the UK, US, Australia and beyond and you will find a growing amount of space dedicated to vegan fish and meat alternatives. But while Watson’s diet turned out to be a healthy one, a different picture is emerging for some of today’s vegans.

Take a look at the ingredients in the ever-increasing variety of products and they can seem more like junk, packed full of salt and ingredients such as “soya protein concentrate” that you wouldn’t find in a chunk of meat.

While today’s factory-produced foods make it easy to switch to a vegan diet without the need to make drastic changes to eating patterns, these alternatives might be worse for our health than the meat versions they are replacing. Finding out is increasingly important, due to the growing number of people avoiding meat and dairy in their diet. So what do we – and don’t we – know?

When Watson applied for vegan …

15/11/2021