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Genetics study reveals how bacteria behind serious childhood diseases evolve to evade vaccines
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2012/WTVM054268.htm[font face=Times, Serif][font size=5]Genetics study reveals how bacteria behind serious childhood diseases evolve to evade vaccines[/font]
30 January 2012
[font size=4]Genetics has provided surprising insights into why vaccines used in both the UK and the USA to combat serious childhood infections can eventually fail. The study, published in ‘Nature Genetics’, which investigates how bacteria change their disguise to evade the vaccines, has implications for how future vaccines can be made more effective.[/font]
[font size=3]Pneumococcus (Streptococcus pneumoniae) causes potentially life-threatening diseases including pneumonia and meningitis. Pneumococcal infections are thought to kill approximately a million young children worldwide each year, although the success of vaccination programmes has led to a dramatic fall in the number of cases in countries such as the UK and the USA.
…
The researchers found bacteria that had evaded the vaccine by swapping the region of the genome responsible for making the polysaccharide coating with the same region from a different serotype, not targeted by the vaccine. This effectively disguised the bacteria, making it invisible to the vaccine. This exchange of genome regions occurred during a process known as recombination, whereby one of the bacteria replaces a piece of its own DNA with a piece from another bacterial type.
Dr Rory Bowden, from the University of Oxford, explains: "Imagine that each strain of the pneumococcus bacteria is a class of schoolchildren, all wearing the school uniform. If a boy steals from his corner shop, a policeman - in this case the vaccine - can easily identify which school he belongs to by looking at his uniform. But if the boy swaps his sweater with a friend from another school, the policemen will no longer be able to recognise him and he can escape. This is how the pneumococcus bacteria evade detection by the vaccine."
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.107230 January 2012
[font size=4]Genetics has provided surprising insights into why vaccines used in both the UK and the USA to combat serious childhood infections can eventually fail. The study, published in ‘Nature Genetics’, which investigates how bacteria change their disguise to evade the vaccines, has implications for how future vaccines can be made more effective.[/font]
[font size=3]Pneumococcus (Streptococcus pneumoniae) causes potentially life-threatening diseases including pneumonia and meningitis. Pneumococcal infections are thought to kill approximately a million young children worldwide each year, although the success of vaccination programmes has led to a dramatic fall in the number of cases in countries such as the UK and the USA.
…
The researchers found bacteria that had evaded the vaccine by swapping the region of the genome responsible for making the polysaccharide coating with the same region from a different serotype, not targeted by the vaccine. This effectively disguised the bacteria, making it invisible to the vaccine. This exchange of genome regions occurred during a process known as recombination, whereby one of the bacteria replaces a piece of its own DNA with a piece from another bacterial type.
Dr Rory Bowden, from the University of Oxford, explains: "Imagine that each strain of the pneumococcus bacteria is a class of schoolchildren, all wearing the school uniform. If a boy steals from his corner shop, a policeman - in this case the vaccine - can easily identify which school he belongs to by looking at his uniform. But if the boy swaps his sweater with a friend from another school, the policemen will no longer be able to recognise him and he can escape. This is how the pneumococcus bacteria evade detection by the vaccine."
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