Word: pneumococcus
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...agreed to help distribute novel vaccine-production techniques to communities in need. John J. Mekalanos, chair of the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, developed a cheaper, faster technique for manufacturing conjugate vaccines, which protect against multiple diseases caused by bacteria such as pneumococcus, which can cause everything from ear infections to pneumonia. The vaccines’ capacity to protect against a variety of diseases at once makes them particularly valuable in developing parts of the world. The only such vaccine currently available to fight these diseases—Prevnar, produced by the pharmaceutical...
Treating humans with live viruses--even ones that shouldn't harm us--is always risky, so Fischetti decided to isolate just the bacteria-puncturing enzyme and use it to kill bacteria from the outside. So far, he has developed compounds against pneumococcus, streptococcus and anthrax and hopes to eventually treat infected patients by squirting the enzymes in nasal-spray form weekly...
...researchers, including first author Susan S. Huang, an instructor at HMS in Infectious Diseases and an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, designed a regression model showing that the likelihood of carrying pneumococcus may be predicted with better success at the community level than at the individual level...
What's harder to evaluate is the treatment of something like a middle-ear infection, which is indeed caused by several different types of bacteria, including Pneumococcus. Left alone, a handful of these infections could lead to permanent hearing loss. And yet their treatment has, in just the past 10 years in the U.S., boosted the prevalence of penicillin-resistant pneumococci to more than...
...fight the real thing. Each person's immune system is chemically different from everyone else's, so it's very difficult for a bacterium to develop a shield that offers universal protection. Diphtheria and tetanus can be prevented by vaccines if they are used properly. A vaccine against the pneumococcus bacterium has recently come out of the lab as well, and scientists expect to test one that targets streptococcus A within a year...