New research suggests that improving housing could significantly reduce malaria in some settings.

Researchers at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine revealed that modernizing traditional housing and mud huts could cut the risk of malaria by half "for people living in some of the highest risk areas of Africa, Asia and South America," Reuters reported.

Malaria, a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes, causes more than half a million deaths per year, mostly among African children.

"Housing improvements were traditionally an important pillar of public health, but they remain underexploited in malaria control. Good housing can block mosquitoes from entering homes and prevent them from transmitting malaria to the people who live there," Lucy Tusting, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

For the study, researchers reviewed 90 studies in Africa, Asia and South America that compared the impact of types of housing on people's risk of developing the life-threatening disease. They found residents of modern homes were 47 percent less likely to be infected with malaria than those living in traditional houses, and residents were 45 to 65 percent less likely to have clinical malaria (fever with infection), Reuters reported.

Researchers said the effectiveness of improving housing will vary depending on the location. While many mosquitoes enter homes to bite humans at night, outdoor malaria-transmission is more common in some places, meaning interventions centered on the home will have less impact, VOA News reported.

"Improved housing has huge potential to reduce malaria transmission around the globe and to keep malaria at bay where we have eliminated it," professor Steve Lindsay, co-author of the study, said in a statement. "Since many of the world's major vector borne diseases are transmitted indoors, improved housing is likely to. be protective against diseases like dengue, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and lymphatic filariasis."

The findings are detailed in the Malaria Journal.