Nature   
Volume 502 Number 7471 pp271-402  17 October 2013
http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html

Nature | Editorial
High hopes
Care must be taken not to raise unrealistic expectations for RTS,S malaria vaccine.
16 October 2013
Excerpt  http://www.nature.com/news/high-hopes-1.13953

Vaccines have been an unparalleled public-health success: they have eradicated smallpox and driven polio to near extinction, and routine childhood immunization saves millions of children a year from death from diseases such as measles, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. So it is not surprising that the public tend to view vaccines as synonymous with elimination, or near elimination, of our microbial foes.

This may help to explain last week’s extensive and often upbeat media coverage of the 18-month results of a huge phase III trial of the malaria vaccine candidate RTS,S/AS01 in more than 15,000 children across 7 African countries. In the United Kingdom, for example, the front page of The Guardian stated that the vaccine “could save lives of millions of children”.    Unfortunately, however, it won’t. The 18-month results only confirm the disappointing results seen after 12 months.

The RTS,S vaccine is not what most people would think of as a vaccine. It provides only partial protection and most of those vaccinated, particularly those in areas with moderate to high malaria transmission rates, will eventually contract the disease. There is also confusion over its efficacy. Many media reports concluded that although the vaccine did not give the 90%-plus efficacy levels of most childhood vaccines, it might nonetheless be satisfactory, with a reported 46% reduction in cases in children vaccinated when they were aged 5 to 17 months, and 27% in 6–12-week-old babies.

Not so. The efficacy figures given for RTS,S are not directly comparable with those usually given for vaccines. The conventional measurement of a vaccine’s success is how may people remain protected after a given period, such as 12 months. Because RTS,S is only partially protective, a different measurement of efficacy is used — a complex statistical model that computes hazard ratios on the basis of the first clinical episodes of malaria. As the designers of the method themselves concede, “a shortcoming of the vaccine efficacy calculated from hazard ratios could be that it is not intuitively understood”. Too true. In the hands of experts, and regulatory agencies, this hazards-ratio model offers a valid measurement of the efficacy of a partially protective vaccine, but it can be easily misinterpreted by the media, politicians and policy-makers…

… The work will continue. Data on the effects of a booster dose given after 18 months will not be available until next year, and RTS,S is also due to be tested in combination with a vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, in an early-stage clinical trial. Meanwhile, the RTS,S trials are to be applauded for having left a lasting legacy in the unprecedented collaboration with African scientists who led the study, and a first-class clinical-trials infrastructure on the continent.

RTS,S has been in the works for almost 30 years. Since 2001, the MVI has put some US$200 million into it, and GSK more than $350 million, with a further $260 million earmarked to complete its development. The huge past impact of vaccines risks fuelling illusions over the impact of having a malaria ‘vaccine’. But the modest efficacy of RTS,S means that it falls squarely in competition with other malaria control measures, many of which might be more cost-effective. Care must be taken not to build excessive expectations that can only lead to disappointment over its potentially limited public-health impact.”