Schistosomiasis vaccines

Abstract

Schistosomiasis is a major neglected tropical disease of public health importance to a billion people. An estimated 200 million people are currently infected; an additional 779 million individuals are at risk to acquire the infection in 74 countries. Despite many years of implementation of mass anti-parasitic drug therapy programs and other control measures, this disease has not been contained and continues to spread to new geographic areas.  The discovery of a protective vaccine still remains the most potentially effective means for the control of this disease, especially if the vaccine provides long-term immunity against the infection. A vaccine would contribute to the reduction of schistosomiasis morbidity through induced immune responses leading to decrease in parasite load and reduced egg production. This vaccine could be administered to children between the ages of 3 and 12 years to prevent severe infection in a particularly high risk population. This review summarizes the current status of schistosomiasis vaccine development.

Keywords: :

• calpain
• neglected tropical disease (NTD)
• protective immunity
• Schistosomiasis
• Sm-p80
• vaccines

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by a grant from the NIAID/NIH (R01AI071223) and Thrasher Research Fund (Award No. 02824–5) to Afzal A. Siddiqui; and NIAID/NIH (R21AI074843) grant to Lisa Ganley-Leal. We also thank Dr Fred Lewis for providing S. japonicum and S. hematobium worms that were used for the study. We appreciate the efforts of Dr. Gul Ahmad and Afzal Ahrorov for making the figure. We thank Dr. David Straus for critically reviewing the manuscript and for his thoughtful comments.