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Oral Vaccine May Prevent Traveler's Diarrhea

© Neal Rolfe Chamberlain

Vacationing is a great time. Millions of people relax and enjoy new places and go on new adventures during their vacations. Unfortunately, with new adventures and places comes a disease called traveler's diarrhea.

Our bodies develop an immune response to the bacteria we are around every day in our communities and homes. Rarely do we acquire diarrhea from our own water supplies. However, new places have different strains of these bacteria. These new strains can cause a great vacation to be a real pain in the bottom part of our bodies, if you know what I mean.

Certain toxin-producing bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli), cause traveler's diarrhea. Over 500 million cases of traveler's diarrhea are reported each year in our world. Now, many people think that diarrhea isn't a major thing. Loose stools for a week or so is no major deal. However, over 70,000 people die each year from this bacterial infection. Usually, children under the age of 5 are the ones who die from this infection.

Treating with antibiotics does not stop the diarrhea and, in some cases, may make things worse. The best thing is to make sure a person with diarrhea gets lots and lots of fluids and the diarrhea will usually go away in 3-10 days. If they don't replace the fluids they lose, people can dehydrate very quickly. This is especially important when a young child gets diarrhea. Many times they don't want to drink and they can dehydrate very quickly. If the dehydration becomes severe they will need to be hospitalized and receive fluids intravenously (by I.V.).

It would be great if someone could come up with a vaccine to prevent this nasty microbe from ruining vacations and causing so many deaths. A group of researchers reported in the August 2000 issue of the journal Infection and Immunity that they may have such a vaccine. The neat thing about this vaccine is that you don't need a shot. It can be taken orally. All you do is swallow and let your immune system do the rest.

The study, by Dani Cohen et al., was designed to determine if this vaccine is safe and, if given to people, would induce the immune system to respond to the bacteria that cause traveler's diarrhea. The results were very good. Nearly all the people given the vaccine produced an immune response to E. coli. Only a couple of the vaccine recipients noted any side effects. A couple of the people vomited a couple hours after swallowing the vaccine.

These results do not tell us how effective the vaccine is in preventing traveler's diarrhea. The next step the researchers are planning is to give

The copyright of the article Oral Vaccine May Prevent Traveler's Diarrhea in Microbiology is owned by Neal Rolfe Chamberlain. Permission to republish Oral Vaccine May Prevent Traveler's Diarrhea in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.