New vaccination strategy could eliminate bacteria that cause urinary tract infections

Anyone who has ever developed a urinary tract infection (UTI) knows that it can be painful, annoying, and persistent. UTIs have a high recurrence rate and mainly affect women – up to 50% of women will experience at least one UTI in their lifetime.

However, what if patients could take a vaccine that would prevent future UTIs? In a March 1 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Duke researchers describe a new vaccination strategy that they believe could reprogram the body to fight bacteria that cause urinary tract infections.

“Although several UTI vaccines have been studied in clinical trials, they have so far had limited success,” said Soman Abraham, Ph.D., professor emeritus of pathology, immunology and Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the School of Medicine and Grace Kerby. main author on the paper.

“There is currently no effective vaccine against UTIs available in the United States despite the high prevalence of bladder infections,” Abraham said. “Our study describes the potential of a highly effective bladder vaccine that can not only eradicate residual bacteria from the bladder, but also prevent future infections.”

The strategy, which the team has shown to be effective in mouse models, is to reprogram an inadequate immune response the team identified last year. They observed that when the bladder of mice becomes infected with E. coli bacteria, the immune system sends repair cells to heal damaged tissue, while launching very few warrior cells to fight the attacker. This causes the bacteria to never completely disappear, living in the bladder to attack again.

According to lead author Jianxuan Wu, Ph.D., who recently received his PhD from Duke’s Department of Immunology, “The new vaccine strategy attempts to teach the bladder to fight off attacking bacteria more effectively. By administering the vaccine directly into the bladder where the residual bacteria harbor, the highly potent vaccine antigen, in combination with an adjuvant known to stimulate recruitment of compensating bacterial cells, performed better than traditional intramuscular vaccination. “

The researchers reported that mice immunized to the bladder effectively fought E. coli infection and cleared any residual bacteria from the bladder, suggesting that the site of administration may be an important factor in determining the effectiveness of the bladder. ‘a vaccine.

“We are encouraged by these findings, and since the individual components of the vaccine have previously been shown to be safe for human use, undertaking clinical studies to validate these results could be done relatively quickly,” Abraham said.