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Bacteria Outmaneuvering Proven Vaccine
It’s been about a year since MRSA, or drug-resistant staph, last made major headlines, scaring officials from Virginia to Connecticut to Maryland to disinfect schools. After the Centers for Disease Control released a report last fall indicating that MRSA was responsible for more than 94,000 life-threatening infections and 19,000 deaths in 2005, drug-resistant staph infections sparked a national discussion about the overuse of antibiotics. But the news this October is about a form of Streptococcus pneumoniae, or pneumococcus, that is causing meningitis, pneumonia, and bloodstream infections, according to a report in The New York Times. Rather than resisting antibiotics, the organisms in this case may have outmaneuvered a proven vaccine.
Known as Serotype 19A, this strep bacteria is infecting more children and elderly people despite the longtime use of a Prevnar, a vaccine which immunizes children against all kinds of pneumococcus. Prevnar, has been around since 2000, but since 2002, rates of infection from Serotype 19A have risen from about 2 per 100,000 children to more than 10 per 100,000. A fourfold increase in life-threatening infections has also occurred among the elderly. Prevnar has been mostly successful in preventing infection from many of the 91 forms of pneumococcus, but now that it has eliminated much of microbial competition, 19A can grow and become a greater threat to humans. Prevnar may have prevented many of the pneumococcus infections in American children in 2000, but the drug is out-dated and doesn’t protect against other forms of pneumococcus.
But the NYT reports that experts say it is hard to know what role the introduction of Prevnar may have played in the rise of the bacteria, which was gaining momentum in some countries before the vaccine’s adoption.
Drug-resistant bacteria arise from strains that have survived through natural selection with traits rendering them unaffected by antibiotics. Of the 91 strains of pneumococcus, most are not dangerous. But pneumococci live in the nose and throat, constantly exchanging genetic material and forming new strains of bacteria. Finding vaccines and antibiotics to eliminate them is very difficult for drug companies.
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