Malaria is a severe public health concern in certain regions, causing 445,000 deaths and over 200 million cases in 2016 (Ashley et al., 2018). The vast majority of these cases and deaths are located in warm climates where the Anopheles mosquito is present, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. Current efforts aim to prevent the disease through vaccination, which has proven to be challenging.
Plasmodium falciparum, the pathogen responsible for malaria, is transmitted between humans via the female vector Anopheles mosquito. This parasite has a complex life cycle that is not fully understood, making it difficult to treat the infection and even more difficult to inoculate a population through vaccination. P. falciparum is also capable of polymorphism, changing structure once a host antibody has identified a pathogenic antigen. For this reason, it is very technically challenging to develop a vaccine that is able to confer a high enough immune response through sufficient host antibody production.
This thesis will begin with a review on the prevalence and severity of malaria and an overview of the principles of immunology and vaccine development. We will then discuss the parasitic life cycle and how it results in the pathogenesis of the disease. Current antimalarial treatments and resistance to those treatments will be analyzed. This thesis will conclude with an in-depth analysis of the current prophylactic vaccines against P. falciparum, focusing on their mechanism, efficacy, and probability of success.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43383 |
| Date | 20 November 2021 |
| Creators | Sparks, Addison Rayne |
| Contributors | Browning, Jeffrey |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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