A malaria vaccine tested by US and African researchers in Mali produced a healthy immune response in young children, the group most vulnerable to the mosquito-borne disease, a report released Thursday showed.

The vaccine, based on a single strain of the falciparum malaria parasite -- the most common and deadliest form of the parasite found in Africa -- was tested on 100 children between the ages of one and six in a rural part of the west African country of Mali.

The children were given one of three, progressively stronger doses of the vaccine or a control vaccine against rabies.

All three doses of the malaria vaccine were well tolerated by the children and produced "very strong antibody responses that were sustained for at least a year," said the report which was published online Thursday in PLoS ONE, the journal of the Public Library of Science.

In fact, the report said, the antibody levels the vaccine produced in the children were as high or higher than antibody levels found in adults, who have developed immune responses to the parasite over lifelong exposure to malaria.

"These findings imply that we may have achieved our goal of using a vaccine to reproduce the natural protective immunity that normally takes years of intense exposure to malaria to develop," said Christopher Plowe, professor and chief of the malaria section at the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland's school of medicine, and a lead author of the study.