Scientists announced recently they had made a first step in developing a vaccine that could protect pregnant women from malaria.
In the recent issue of the science journal Nature, US researchers said they may have found clues as to why women in their first pregnancy are at a greater risk of contracting malaria, according to Reuters.
Researchers, led by Michael Fried of the Walter Reed Army Institute in Washington DC, conducted studies on mothers-to-be on the Thai-Burmese border and also in the African countries of Kenya and Malawi.
Studies showed that anti-adhesion antibodies that limit the number of the parasites that cause malaria on the placenta appear in women who have already been pregnant, but not in women in their first pregnancy. A vaccine using this finding could “benefit millions of pregnant women and infants in the tropics and should be a public health priority,” researchers wrote.
