File: Medical Technologist and Customer Service Director of PARTEC Alex Lope demonstrates through a microscope the rapid detection of malaria and diagnosis during the 6th MIM Pan-African Malaria Conference held at the International Convention Centre in Durban on October 8, 2013.

Scientists have identified specific genetic variations that protect some African children from developing severe malaria and say their discovery will boost the fight against a disease that kills around half a million children a year.

In the largest study of its kind, the researchers said identifying the variations in DNA at a specific location, or locus, on the genome helps explain why some children develop severe malaria and others don’t in communities where people are constantly exposed to the mosquito-borne disease.

In some cases, they said, having a specific genetic variation almost halves a child’s risk of developing a life-threatening case of the disease.

“We can now say, unequivocally, that genetic variations in this region of the human genome provide strong protection against severe malaria in real-world settings, making a difference to whether a child lives or dies,” said Dominic Kwiatkowski, a professor at the Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Institute and Centre for Human Genetics and one of the lead researchers on the project.

The work was conducted by MalariaGEN, an international network of scientists across Africa, Asia and other malaria-endemic regions, largely funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Malaria killed about 584,000 people in 2013, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) figures. Around 90 percent of its victims are children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.

For this study, researchers analysed data from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Gambia and Tanzania — comparing the DNA of 5,633 children with severe malaria with the DNA of 5,919 children without severe malaria. They then replicated their key findings in a further 14,000 children.

Publishing their work in the journal Nature, the researchers explained that the new locus identified is near a cluster of genes which code for proteins called glycophorins that are involved in the malaria parasite’s invasion of red blood cells.

*Reuters