Elimination of Malaria: What prospects exist?

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(Edited)

As someone with blood genotype AA, I will be more than happy to see malaria totally eliminated in our universe (I am just recuperating from another bout of malaria, by the way). AA blood genotype individuals are the most susceptible to malaria according to several research reports. I can count the number of times I have been indisposed in the last ten years and malaria would be 97 out of every 100. On average, Using myself and my household as a case study, AA individuals come down with malaria 3 to 4 times a year. in actual fact, AA individuals are 18 times more like to have malaria than AS individuals and about 36 times more likely than SS folks.

The disease which is primarily caused by the falciparum species of the genus plasmodium claims quite a number of lives annually, despite all the efforts that have been, and still been, geared towards tackling it. In 2019 alone according to UNICEF's data, there were 409,000 deaths from a global malaria incidence of 229 million. If one considers the dearth of proper documentation in the developing countries, those figures could easily be the double of what was reported by UNICEF.

A lot of efforts are being invested in tackling the blood-sucking disease, no doubt. However, it may seem that more needs to be done in order to completely eliminate the disease or reduce it to the barest minimum. The prophylactic measure of sleeping under insecticide-treated malaria nets has really helped limit the incidence of the disease and remains the major route through which malaria is being tackled. Although recently, a malaria vaccine known as RTS got approved by WHO, the distribution has rather been at the speed of a snail as far as I am concerned.

One loophole of insecticide-treated nets as a prophylactic measure against malaria is that the malaria vector, mosquitoes, are not limited to biting at night or indoors. In order words, a mosquito can bite even one when is just going about their day-to-day activities and if such a mosquito has the malaria pathogen in its gut, one is almost certain to come down with the disease with time.


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source: piqsels

One interesting prospect, if it ever becomes a reality, is the idea of genetically modifying mosquitoes such that they are not able to carry the protozoan pathogen responsible for malaria in their guts whenever they bite a malaria-infected person. If the genetically modified mosquitoes with such a feature are able to survive and effectively multiply in the environment to replace the wild-type mosquitos, getting malaria from the bites of mosquitoes will become a thing of the past.

Genetically modifying the mosquito population will eliminate the need to sleep under insecticide-treated nets as a prophylaxis against malaria (mosquitoes make annoying sounds, so I may still need to use nets). However, this does not guarantee that malaria will be totally eliminated because some asexual form of the parasite becomes temporarily dormant during drug treatment and may grow back once the concentration of the drug in the blood goes below a particular threshold level.

This means that once an individual becomes infected by the malaria parasite through the bite of one or more mosquitoes, he or she may no longer need to be bitten to subsequently suffer from malaria. Eliminating this kind of malaria requires a special approach - something that the malaria vaccine would be able to handle. The malaria vaccine works by inducing high antibody titer, thus preventing the parasite from reaching the liver, as well as illicit an inflammatory response from other parts of the immune system.

It is, however, worthy to note that the currently approved RTS,S vaccine against malaria by WHO has only been tested in children 5 to 17 months and, thus, remains approved for the age group. Research is still ongoing as far as malaria vaccines are concerned and things might change in the nearest future.

Final words

Whatever the case may be, humanity is still a long way off from eliminating one of the most deadly diseases in the universe. The world has been fixated on COVID19 in the past few years and within the same time, vaccines have been developed through rigorous research. One reason why malaria has not received similar attention is the distribution of the malaria vector which is limited to a particular part of the world, thus, limiting the disease to that part of the world. I stand to be corrected in the comment section.

Thank you all for reading.

Resources

https://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=pjbs.2006.452.456
https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12936-020-3106-2
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/219394/simple-genetic-modification-aims-stop-mosquitoes
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/world-s-first-mass-malaria-vaccine-rollout-could-prevent-thousands-of-children-dying/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria_vaccine

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10 comments
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Well written and thanks for sharing this informative post! !1UP

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Malaria is definitely one of the big problems of African countries.

I remember that you mentioned the possibility to genetically modify the mosquito population back in days, and that I was very suspicious about this. How can we be sure that this will work and that there won't be any secondary and undesired effects? Have research progressed on this matter, or are we still busy with small-scale tests?

Cheers!

PS: if my memory failed, please just consider this as a fresh question ^^

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Your memory is as fresh as ever. Research is still actively ongoing as far as the genetic modification is concerned. The main stumbling block remains ethical and safety concerns wrt human test subjects. Of course, researchers are working hard to find a way around it and regulating bodies are also trying to find solutions.

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Good to know things move on. As always, research is slow. Whereas tit is good to be slow and careful, in the meantime African people die. Fingers are crossed for the future!

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I am an AA genotype so I can totally relate to the fact that we are much more prone to being affected by malaria(I always keep emergency malaria meds in my first aid box just in case).

What would really be mind blowing though is the idea that malaria could be exterminated by ridding the carrier(mosquitoes) of the parasite totally through gene modification. It is a really good idea but it has left me wondering how and what the process for that would look like considering that mosquitoes are very tiny and hard to get a hold of and there's probably tens of millions(I stand to be corrected here) of them existing at any single period.

This is a really nice post. Thanks for sharing

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How mosquitoes can be genetically modified is simple in explanation. All the mosquitoes in the world do not need to be genetically modified. What is needed is just a few but those few must possess other attributes that confer a selective advantage on them. So that with time, the desirable gene becomes dominant in the population.

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