The potential for a Norovirus Vaccine

Norovirus is practically the modern-day form of the plague. When I was in high school, a norovirus outbreak sent three hundred students home in just two days. A miserable cause of acute gastroenteritis, no vaccine has been developed due to its high genetic variability. However, a promising cadidate developed by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited is currently progressing along clinical trial phases (Frontiers). The vaccine is a viral-like particle vaccine, meaning it imitates pieces of parts of the virus in question and uses this to prompt an immune response (Frontiers). Moreover, it is an intramuscular, two dose vaccine (Frontiers).

Above is a graphic depicting the signs and symptoms of Norovirus. Graphic courtesy of Medical News Today.

The phases of vaccine research are lengthy and can take many years to progress through in order to make sure that the vaccine is safe. In a YouTube video published by Johns Hopkins Medicine, these phases are explained. Phase 1 is the first human trials allowed, and has very few participants that are studied for one to two years to ensure safety (Johns Hopkins Medicine). Phase 2 is also smaller, with hundreds of people, and can take two to five years to study safety and dosage (Johns Hopkins Medicine). Phase 3 increases in size to thousands of people, which primarily investigates the immune response produced by the vaccine (Johns Hopkins Medicine). Organizations can apply for licensure upon completion of this phase (Johns Hopkins Medicine). Finally Phase 4 has hundreds of thousands of people, and studies participants longitudinally to determine longevity (Johns Hopkins Medicine).

The norovirus vaccine in development by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited is currently in Phase 2 of clinical trials (Takeda). The VLP vaccine is currently being tested in humans in a double blind study that includes the usage of placebo (Takeda). Participants in this study are both men and women. Currently, Takeda’s vaccine is the only norovirus vaccine being tested in humans (Takeda). This phase of clinical testing was launched in 2016 and is currently in continuation (Takeda). Promising data from phase one suggests that the VLP vaccine produces a high immune response upon reception of two doses of the vaccine (Takeda).

Investigating the link between Autism Spectrum Disorder and vaccines

This blog is one that I have been looking forward to. Having grown up in the post-autism-vaccination-scare era of the United States, it was incredibly interesting and informative to learn about the bias and error behind the original study conducted by Andrew Wakefield in 1998 (Behavior.org). Dr. Thomas Zane, in his article “The Vaccine and Autism Connection: The Wakefield Study Once Again Discredited,” discusses the background behind the Wakefield study. He revealed that Wakefield recruited his 12 participants from a group that was known for their anti-vaccination agenda. More over, he was paid by attorneys who were constructing an anti-vaccination lawsuit to conduct the study. Wakefield was incapable of reproducing his results, and he started the initial study with his conlclusion already predetermined. He had no legitimate control group, and the children he studied were subjected to unethical and intrusive tests. As a result, his study was and still is dripping with bias.

Conversely, the Madsen paper , which was an attempt to debunk the Wakefield study once and for all, boasted more than half a million participants from Denmark that they longitudinally studied for 10 years. About 10,000 particpants were excluded from the study due to diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder or other realted conditions, immigration, death, or extreme illness. Unvaccinated children were the controls in this experiment. There is no clear bias in this paper. One could argue that the researchers entered into this study with the desire to disprove Wakefield; however, throughout their paper, they remain open to the possibility of its validity and merely examine the data to determine truth. In regards to the results of this study, it can be argued that the relative risk of autism spectrum disorder in kids injected with the MMR vaccine is equitable to those who are unvaccinated. As defined by the CDC, it could be said that the relative risk ratio of autism in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children is close to one.

https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/vaccines

Personally I have no problem with vaccines. In fact, it upsets me when people do. Especially with the recent events of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is incredibly frustrating to know that life-saving injections exist, yet privileged people turn them down, selfishly endangering those who are not so fortunate as to be able to avoid exposure to diseases like the mumps. I am so thankful that my parents dilligently followed immunization recommendations, and that I was able to stay up to date on all my vaccines as a child. I can only hope that, moving forward, the anti-vaccination movement would lose steam and die out. If so, we can eradicate so many deathly illnesses from not only our country, but the whole world too.

Cholera flares up in Nigeria, Cameroon

When we studied Cholera in class, I was really interested by the disease, as I had always regarded it as a disease of the past. This assignment, however, opened my eyes to Cholera’s continued presence in the world. The first outbreak I examined occured in Nigeria in 2021 (US News and World Report). Cholera has an environmental resevoir, so northern Nigeria, where flooding is prominent and sanitation is poor, was hit very hard by this specific outbreak. Cholera organisms living in biofilms in the water was able to infect many and kill more than 2,300 people.

Photo credit: US News and World Report

The second outbreak I examined is a more recent one. Cameroon has counted more than 1,300 cases of Cholera as of February 10th, according to VOA News. This outbreak was driven by water as well, as water shortages led to community spread of Cholera around public water spouts and toilets. In addition, Cameroonian officials warned of eating contaminaed food and keeping latrines, where people use the restroom, dirty. Limited access to sanitized water means that Cameroonians are having to drink water infected with Cholera biofilms, leading to at least 13 deaths. The Public Health Ministry of Cameroon is tracking the cases through local hospitals; however, they believe their tallies are likely off as a lot of Cameroonians visit traditional healers and try not to visit modern doctors if possible.

This outbreak does not appear to have any association with antibiotic resistance. The driving factor behind both is most definitely a lack of access to clean drinking water and poor public sanitary measures. No specific strain of Cholera was identified as the culprit behind either outbreak. The public health officials of both Nigeria and Cameroon warned the public against dehydration and stressed the importance of replenishing liquids and electrolytes. Consequently, one can infer that children are at the greatest risk of passing away from Cholera, as they do not know when to rehydrate themselves and can suffer from complications.