From Me to You...:)

Malaria Update

A vaccine against the parasitic disease malaria cut illnesses by more than half in field trials and could be safely given with other childhood inoculations, two studies have reported. The vaccine, which will begin a third and final phase of clinical trials early next year, could become the first to protect children from malaria, which kills 1 million people worldwide every year.
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Malaria kills nearly 1 million people each year and sickens about 2 million others, according to estimates from the World Health Organization. Most of the deaths are among children younger than 5 in sub-Saharan Africa, the population that the vaccine targets.
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In the first study, conducted in Kenya and Tanzania, 894 children ages 5 months to 17 months were innoculated either with the three-dose experimental malaria vaccine or a rabies vaccine as a control group. In the eight-month follow-up period, researchers found that children receiving RTS,S had 53% fewer diagnosed cases of malaria -- 38 episodes compared with 86 among recipients of the control rabies vaccine.
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Read the entire article Malaria vaccine may be available in 2012 at the Los Angeles Times here.

Thought of the Day

Kids can smell exhaustion like a wild dog smells fear. They wait, quietly looking for the weak moment, saving all the high-pitched screeching and endless circle-running until you are totally out of reserves. So, I wonder as I wipe the applesauce spray off of the wall, is this some sort of evolutionary advantage? Or just the vestigial fear-smelling ability of the wild dog? Am I the oryx calf? Hmmm...