AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, October 5, 1998
Daniel J. DeNoon, Senior Editor
The trials are now underway in the U.S., Finland, and South Africa, reported Juhani Eskola of the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki, Finland, in a presentation to the American Society for Microbiology's 38th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), held September 24-27, 1998, in San Diego, California.
Eskola said that the trials will measure protection against invasive infection, nasopharyngeal carriage of pneumococcal organisms, and protection against pneumonia and otitis media.
The conjugate vaccines include capsular polysaccharide antigens from pneumococcal serotypes 1, 3, 4, 5, 6B, 7F, 9V, 14, 18C, 19F, and 23F. They are coupled to carrier proteins: either diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid, CRM 197 protein, or meningococcal outer membrane complex.
Early trials demonstrate that these vaccines can stimulate immune responses in people: including infants, immunocompromised individuals, and others unable to mount an immune response to polysaccharides.
"The response to conjugate vaccine is characteristic to a TD immunogen, immunologic memory is induced, and the antibodies are functionally active," Eskola wrote in his presentation abstract. Reduction in the nasopharyngeal carriage rate of the pneumococci has been demonstrated in some Phase II studies."
Any reduction in upper respiratory carriage occurred only in serotypes included in the vaccine. Carriage of other serotypes either increased or was unaffected by vaccination.
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