20 cents-a-dose vaccine safe and immunogenic.(Brief Article)

2002 APR 17 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Trials of a cholera vaccine manufactured in Vietnam at a cost of about only US$0.20 a dose have produced encouraging results, especially for children, an international team of researchers reports in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

The team, headed by Professor Dang Duc Trach at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi, concluded that the vaccine was "safe and immunogenic" and "could elicit robust immune responses."

The vaccine was found to elicit high levels of immunity in children, for whom the risk of endemic cholera is highest, as well as in adults. These responses were comparable to those elicited by a Swedish-made vaccine that has already been licensed for use in several European countries.

Work began in Vietnam during the mid-1980s on the production of a killed oral cholera whole-cell vaccine that could be used in the country's public health programs. The vaccine was later modified so that it could also counter a new form of epidemic cholera that emerged in the 1990s.

The two trials reported in the Bulletin were carried out in Hanoi and involved about 144 adults aged between 17 and 25 years and about 103 children aged 1-12 years. The trials were conducted by scientists from Vietnam, Sweden, the United States, the Republic of Korea, ...