Study shows antibiotics could help fight malaria

In a major breakthrough for malaria treatment European researchers have shown that mice infected with the disease administered antibiotics developed immunity against re-infection.

Conducted through the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya, the study showed that two antibiotics - clindamycin and azithromycin - damaged the malaria parasites when they entered the liver, preventing them from becoming the disease-causing form that enters the bloodstream.

Head of the research Dr Steffen Borrmann from Heidelberg University School of Medicine, explained that stopping the parasite in the liver gives the immune system time to develop its defences. The study showed an immune response powerful enough to protect against subsequent infections 40 days after the ‘immunisation’, even without antibiotics.

Scientists are yet to develop an effective vaccine for malaria, however current efforts to do so rely on so-called irradiated malaria parasites. Dead or weakened forms of a pathogen are injected into the body, allowing it to mount an effective immune response that is primed to react should the body be infected again.

This new approach, however, is entirely needle-free and “banks on naturally occurring transmission of the 'vaccine dose' by mosquito bites,” Borrmann said.

It also avoids the time and expense of producing and delivering weakened parasites to a population. On the other hand, though, there are concerns that a natural delivery model can be unpredictable as the number of mosquito bites differs between individuals.

Dr Borrmann suggested a good candidate for the first proof-of-concept studies of this method in humans would be azithromycin-chloroquine, currently being developed by Pfizer with support from the Medicines for Malaria Venture.