Vaccine makes headway against trachoma
Experimental immunization may boost fight against blinding disease
By Nathan Seppa
By deleting a key component in a bacterium that causes a blinding infection called trachoma, scientists have developed a vaccine that might protect against the disease. Monkeys given the experimental vaccine become partially or totally immune to Chlamydia trachomatis, the microbe that causes the condition, researchers report online October 10 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
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“I think this is promising, to finally see some results in vaccine development,” says physician Danny Haddad, director of the International Trachoma Initiative, a nongovernmental organization based in Decatur, Ga., who was not involved in the study. Haddad cautions that it could still take many years before a vaccine reaches the public, but allows that “it could be a very helpful tool within the global strategy against trachoma.” That approach now centers on improving hygiene, dosing whole villages with antibiotics, and providing eye surgery as needed (SN: 2/23/08, p. 116).
The new findings also raise the possibility that such a vaccine might work against a better-known strain of C. trachomatis — the one that causes the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia. “It’s suggestive of that, but suggestions are always risky,” says study coauthor Harlan Caldwell, a microbiologist at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont. Still, he adds, “I think [the vaccine] would be highly likely to have a reasonable effect against other chlamydial diseases.”