Study Status: Recruiting
Recruit Status: Recruiting
Study Type: Interventional
Official Title: Investigating the Mechanisms and Determinants of Systemic and Mucosal Immunity to Salmonella Typhi and Salmonella Paratyphi A in naïve and Previously Exposed Individuals - A Challenge and Rechall
Brief Summary:
Enteric fever, an infection characterised by diarrhoea and rash, is most often caused by a bacteria called Salmonella enterica. After ingesting contaminated food or drink, the Salmonellae travel first to the gut, then the bloodstream, from where they can infect other parts of the body. Antibiotics are used to kill the bacteria, but with increasing rates of antibiotic resistance, this treatment is becoming less effective.
Two Salmonella variants, Typhi and Paratyphi, cause over 30 million cases of enteric fever and more than 200,000 deaths per year, mostly in developing countries. While improved hygiene and sanitation should eventually eliminate enteric fever, reduction of the disease burden in the medium term is achievable through effective vaccination.
Vaccines likely to be available for mass vaccination are effective only against those Salmonella strains that bear the Vi polysaccharide capsule protein. Strains that do not have these capsule proteins, or have no capsule, will not be affected by vaccination and could 'fill' the space vacated by the capsulated strains. Indeed, enteric fever caused by S. Paratyphi A which does not carry the Vi protein, has risen during the past decade and accounts for more than half of all cases in some areas. Thus it is important that effective vaccines are available to protect against infection by both capsulated and noncapsulated Salmonella enterica. To develop such vaccines, we need a complete understanding of the human immune response to both types, including the contribution of immunity in the gut and the bloodstream, immune response to bacterial surface proteins, and the role of antibodies. How much cross-protection there is between the types of typhoidal Salmonellae after natural infection or vaccination is not known, but this is critical to vaccine development.