A medical illustration depicts the Shigella bacteria, a leading cause of diarrheal disease.
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Diarrhea has been a headline story in the United States this summer, with thousands of cases of explosive diarrhea traced to Cyclospora from tainted lettuce –- and the first two deaths from the outbreak now confirmed in Michigan.
In other parts of the world, diarrhea is a constant — and deadly — threat. Over 1 million people die from diarrheal illness such as dysentery every year. Nearly half of them are children under age 5. Chad has the highest rate of childhood deaths: roughly 1 in 140 children under 5 die each year.
In the world of public health, however, the disease often does not get the attention it deserves. It's because of what researchers call the "poo taboo" –- people just aren't comfortable talking about diarrhea.
Now a vaccine candidate offers a new hope.
The vaccine is called WRSs2 –- named after the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. It was tested jointly at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the Emory Vaccine Center's Hope Clinic in Atlanta. The results, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases this summer: It was 89% effective at preventing one of the leading causes of diarrheal deaths, shigellosis.
The study recruited 108 adults. Half received the vaccine — a weakened version of the shigella bacteria suspended in a liquid — almost like a yogurt. The dose is a tad less than a shot-glass worth taken twice a month apart. The other half got doses of salt water.
The weakened bacteria is strong enough to bring on an immune reaction but shouldn't make anyone really sick, says Dr. Robert Frenck, a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's and director of its Center for Vaccine Research, who co-led the trial.
Even though the number of trial participants were relatively small, that "rigorous" setup also makes the 89% figure harder to shrug off, says Dr. Kawsar Talaat, an infectious disease physician and vaccine scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Deliberate exposure is a brutal test — in this trial, 81% of the placebo group got sick, experiencing diarrhea and fever in some cases before receiving antibiotics.
"So the fact that the vaccine prevented almost 90% of the illness is really remarkable." she says. "It's the best efficacy we've ever seen."
Talaat runs studies of her own but was not involved in this trial.
Frenck thanks the volunteers who contributed to the study. He says they were paid about $250 a day for roughly a week for the trial, and took a quiz ensuring they knew the risks. While it might not be for everyone, he says the volunteers made a swift and efficient trial possible rather than enrolling thousands and waiting for them to naturally get infected — and he notes their commitment is critical to the vaccine effort.
"Throughout the world, diarrheal illness is the second leading cause of death of children," Frenck says. "And Shigella is one of the more common causes of bacterial diarrhea." It's spread through contaminated food and water. Cases are more common in areas with poor sanitation.
The children who survive don't always recover fully. Kids who get Shigella often slip off their growth curves and never quite catch up.
"If somebody develops Shigella, then they develop prolonged diarrhea, more hospitalization, more malnutrition and cognitive impairment," says Dr. Jahangir Hossain of the Gambia Medical Research Council Unit at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The peak of risk, he says, arrives between 12 and 23 months of age.