If vaccines are answers to viruses, why doesn't malaria have a vaccine?
If those infected by a virus and survive develop antibodies against the virus, why don't people who have malaria develop antibodies? I, for one, have been infected and recovered from malaria too many times.. and so many other people too, which means people who contact malaria don't develop antibodies
Why do communities never develop herd immunity against malaria?
Maleria isn't a virus. It is a parasite transmitted by mosquito bites. There are four main species of the malaria parasite: Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium malariae, Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium ovale. It is treated by drugs which target the parasite.
Think more fleas or worms rather than virus. So no antibodies - no vaccine
Malaria isn't caused by a virus, but rather, a parasite . Once the parasite has invaded the body, it lives there, reproducing and mutating. We can get immunity to it, but immunity is very short-lived. There is one vaccine, but its not very effective., far less effective than most vaccines. and it requires 4 shots (imagine how hard that is in rural Africa.. ). I think that malaria, by its nature,m is hard to work on. But also, research tends to done on diseases of the rich, and malaria was long regarded as a disease of the poor. Bill Gates money has done a lot to fund malaria vaccine research, and I suspect that the market has become more attractive to pharma companies as countries with high levels of infection get richer. Nevertheless, the ideal, for a pharma co, is to develop a drug to alleviate (not cure) a chronic disease which affects the wealthy.
An inreresting article that was published yesterday.
nationalgeographic.co.uk/sc...
Very informative and eye-opener
You are welcome
By the way, if I may ask- do you know how chloroquine and other malaria drugs work? Do they actually get rid of (or kill) the parasites or do they just alleviate the fever and other symptoms?
As I understand it, Hydroxychloroquine is an ionophore for ZINC - ie it has the effect of concentrating zinc, in the cells and it is the ZINC which has the effect on the virus. This property of hydroxychloroquine is known - there are studies back to 2014 which show this in connection with its effects on malaria. Some of the trials relating to Covid-19 have used hydroxychloroquine, zinc and azithromycin (to deal with bacterial infections which follow on from CV infection). Those seem to have worked, whereas the trials on hydroxychloroquine alone, or hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, don't.
Generally, zinc seems to be protective. There are studies which show the effects of zinc on coronaviruses.. We need more data!
To me (not a medic or scientist) it seems odd that any trials were done with hydroxychloroquine that did not also include zinc. (And, I am a patent lawyer, used to looking at medical and scientific innovation in the context of the past). As members of the public, this seems to me hopeful - i.e it tells us something that we may be able to use to protect ourselves - that zinc is useful, if we can get it to the right places in the body, We also have to bear in m ind that too much zinc overall can cause a copper deficiency, so we shouldn't supplement large amounts. On the other hand, around 80% of us are low in zinc (soils quality...). My own take on this is to take a small daily zinc supplement (I take 15 - 3o mg, zinc picolinate). If I were infected I would do my damndest to get my hands on strong zinc lozenges and use these say 4 times / day, leaving them to dissolve as slowly as possible at the back of the palette, with the hope that this would give the body the best change of getting zinc into the nasal passages to reduce the viral load and make the infection easier for the immune system to deal with. These are the lozenges I want to buy
lifeextensioneurope.com/enh... . They have been out of stock in the UK. There is some small scale research on them which looked impressive to me. I wouldn't take these as a matter of course - too strong - but in the case of infection, I want them.
In relation to your question as to whether zinc kills an infection or reduces it... It is worth bearing in mind that our immune system is complex - we have many different types of white blood cell which attack invaders in different ways. Messages are passed between cells by peptides called cytokines, and if our innate immune system isn't enough to deal with an invader, our body will build targetted antibodies to help deal with the invader. Zinc seems to support several kinds of white blood cell including natural killer cells and T cells. It also reduces inflammatory cytokines and reduces oxidative stress. All good. If natural killer cells and T cells meet viral particles, they kill them. But we need ENOUGH of the natural killer cells and T cells to deal with the quantity of viral particles. So we should maximise our body's production of white blood cells. For this, good sleep is vital, and exercise and a good diet especially one minimising sugar help. We should also minimise the amount of virus (the "viral load") that our body has to deal with in the case of infection. This is where, I think, masks as well as distancing, could help. Even the simplest mask or scarf reduces the amount of virus that gets into the mouth / nose. It still lets viral particles through, but fewer. To me, it seems that this could make a vital difference as to whether our immune system can cope or not. Every viral particle that is not destroyed by our immune system will go on to reproduce itself..
I hope that helps.
As for the malaria parasite I can't remember any specifics but the defence mounted by the white blood cells will take a similar form. I had a brief look at the studies and these indicate that our defence to malaria includes which blood cells with gobble up parts of the parasite and others which poison it. The human body is amazing! My brother had malaria as a toddler and it used to recur regularly, with diminished power. As I recall, it came back when he was run down, so maybe that indicates that when he was strong his body was capable of dealing with the parasite which remained in the body.
Long answer.. Impossible to answer some of these questions briefly. You might be curious about me - as I said, my background is patent law, mostly litigating against the big pharma companies. I now run a start-up, Zeez Sleep. We make a sleep device, which is great but still largely unknown. I would love to get it better known, so that we survive (we are unfunded) and so that we can help as many people as possible. Good sleep is absolutely vital to the performance of the immune system. I have written a couple of articles on sleep / immune system in my blog and one on Parkinson's. Plymouth Uni did a (successful) study on our device with people with Parkinson's related sleep disorders and I would love to take it further but can't fund it yet. My son't father has PD. Generally, I am fascinated by how the body works, especially the brain. I have no science background but have worked with some stunning scientists in many different fields. My IP dept was the leading IP law dept in a very niche are in the UK / Europe .
I wish you well in your quest to beat Parkinson's and am willing to answer any questions to which I can contribute.
I am putting the references to a couple of studies that I have looked at in writing this below - just to keep the info together.
Best, Anna
Also, there aren't vaccines for every virus. None has been developed yet for HIV, which cases AIDS, for example.
Not every "germ" (by that, I mean any invader, whether it's a bacteria, virus or parasite) causes the body to mount a great immune response. Malaria is one of those...which is why folks can't fight it off very well.
So, if the body can't mount a good defense to the actual malaria parasite, it won't respond all that well to a vaccine for the parasite, either. :o(
Antibodies live in the blood plasma. Malaria lives inside red blood cells which protects it from antibodies.
Those that know how to maintain their immune systems in the ideal condition in which they were designed to be, have discovered that they are well protected against viruses, bacteria and parasites alike (bad news for the AMA 'medical' establishment), and vaccines, with their often questionable ingredients, tend to interfere with the healing efforts of a healthy immune system.
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