Discovery Opens the Way for Creation of New Vaccine for Bronchiolitis
A team of Argentine scientists found out why in 1967 missed a vaccine for bronchiolitis, which opens the door to create an effective immunization against a disease that annually kills one million children in the world, local media reported.
Experts from the Foundation for Research in Infectious Diseases Child (Infant), located in Buenos Aires, determined the reason that a vaccine developed in 1967 in the United States against the disease caused the hospitalization of over a hundred boys and killed two of them.
Fernando Polack, executive director of Infant, explained that the antibody injected into the vaccine's just what affected the young.
“Antibodies have to have a special force to stick to the virus and thus block it. If the antibody does not have that strength, triggering an autoimmune disease ends,” explained the local press Polack, who heads research for years.
“In the body there are receptors (called Toll) that recognize different germs. If the vaccine is able to recognize and activate the Toll receptors, is effective because it acquires the force to activate bronchiolitis. The vaccine” 67 did not activate Toll receptors that's why they hurt, “added the researcher.
To develop the vaccine, U.S. scientists had followed the same method of Jonas Salk, who in 1955 discovered the polio immunization by injecting the killed virus for the body to develop immunity.
In order to find a solution to bronchiolitis, researchers injected to 200 babies in Washington, of which 80 per cent had to be hospitalized for worsening their condition and two of them, 14 and 16 months, died.
“The autopsy showed that his lungs were full of syncytial, which is the virus that causes respiratory bronchiolitis,” said Pollack, whose research was published today in the journal Nature Medicine.
From that episode, no other research team was able to develop a vaccine against the disease, during each winter to collapse to hospitals by the growth Argentine cases of children with this condition.
But this new development “opens the door to create a vaccine that is effective,” he said Polack.
“There are millions of kids each year who are infected with this virus and so every winter collapse both pediatric units such as London (the locality of) Berazategui” said biochemistry Florence Delgado, co-author of the study.
