Schistosomiasis burden and mass drug administration efficacy
The Division's own Justin Komguep Nono and Professor Frank Brombacher recently published a paper entitled Schistosomiasis burden and its association with lower measles vaccine responses in School Children From Rural Cameroon in the journal of Frontiers in Immunology.
Justin Komguep Nono and his co-authors studied the immune responses of children in rural areas of Cameroon who had been administered praziquantel, an anti-parasitic drug to treat human schistosomiasis.The mass drug administration (MDA) of praziquantel has been used to reduce the transmission of S. haematobium and S. mansoni. The effects of MDA and the impact of schistosomiasis on the titers of antibodies in vaccinated children had been poorly studied; they therefore set out to study the prevalence of schistosomiasis in schoolchildren, eight months after MDA as well as screen for measles antibodies in previously vaccinated schoolchildren.
The study found that 8 months after a MDA, the prevalence of infection persisted at high levels and analysis revealed a negative association of schistosomiasis on measles vaccine elicited-responses.
The study provides guidelines to improve the fight against schistosomiasis, gearing towards more informed approaches for the elimination and not just the control of the disease.