Vaccines to prevent bacterial enteric infections in children

Considerable progress has been made in the last decade in developing vaccines against the most important bacterial enteric infections. Two new vaccines against typhoid fever (oral Ty21a and parenteral Vi polysaccharide) have been licensed in many countries. Newer generations of more sophisticated typhoid vaccines are undergoing clinical testing including recombinant attenuated S typhi strains and Vi polysaccharide-carrier protein conjugate vaccines. Two inactivated oral cholera vaccines, consisting of inactivated V cholerae 01 bacteria alone or in combination with the B subunit of cholera toxin, each conferred 50% to 53% protection over 3 years in a field trial in Bangladesh where subjects were immunized with a three-dose regimen. An engineered live oral cholera vaccine, strain CVD 103-HgR, has been shown in extensive clinical trials to be well tolerated by children and adults in developing countries and highly immunogenic following administration of just a single oral dose; a large-scale field trial of the efficacy of this vaccine is underway. Several candidate vaccines against Shigella and enterotoxigenic E coli are in clinical trials.