Do Helicobacter pylori therapeutic vaccines need to be tailored to the age of the recipient?

Abstract

Helicobacter pylori infections typically commence during childhood and last for life. Freire de Melo and colleagues compared cytokine profiles in the stomachs of H. pylori-infected and H. pylori-uninfected children and adults from Brazil. They suggest that the immune effector response in infected children differs from infected adults, specifically that stomachs of infected children contained elevated regulatory T-cell markers and less IL-17 compared with adults. As vaccine-mediated protection against H. pylori is believed to involve IL-17 and to be inhibited by regulatory T cells, this raises the possibility that individual H. pylorivaccines may have different efficacies in children and adults.

Keywords::

• children
• Helicobacter pylori
• regulatory T cells
• Th17
• therapeutic vaccine

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or mater ials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.