2020_10_07_CIE_aragon_beatriz
New vaccine candidates proposed for brucellosis control
Beatriz Aragón's doctoral thesis demonstrates the efficacy of vaccines against ovine and porcine brucellosis in murine model
PHOTO: Manuel Castells
Beatriz Aragón, PhD from the University of Navarra, has developed a research on vaccine models to combat brucellosis.
Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease that can affect human health - rarely fatal but disabling - and also cause great economic losses due to infection in livestock. Animal vaccination is a prophylactic solution to this socio-health problem that mainly affects the most disadvantaged countries.
Dr. Aragón's results are promising, although its efficacy has yet to be tested in natural hosts. With regard to ovine brucellosis, the study has focused on solving some of the problems presented by the Rev1 vaccine -the only vaccine available, recommended mainly for sheep, despite having some drawbacks such as infection of humans, resistance to antibiotics (specifically streptomycin) or interference in the serological diagnosis of the disease-.
"The Rev1 strain sensitive to the antibiotic streptomycin is of great interest to society because it has reversed resistance to one of the antibiotics used in the treatment of human brucellosis, also reducing residual virulence, making the vaccine safer," says Dr. Aragón.
The future of this research may be linked to application in the natural host, which would demonstrate the progress achieved in this work. "It would be interesting to continue with the study of the mutations identified in two genes related to streptomycin resistance in Rev1, to better understand the mechanism of resistance and the possible correlation between both mutations."
In relation to swine brucellosis, the research has focused on the development of vaccine candidates since there is not, to date, an effective vaccine against this infection. "The virulence of the mutants obtained in this researchis currently being studied in murine model " and "the results so far are good and open the door to the study against other strains of Brucellasuis(causative agent of swine brucellosis) and, if they are similar, we could have an effective vaccine against swine brucellosis".
Other issues that could enrich this research -according to Dr. Aragón- are the creation of new vaccine candidates, subjecting these trials to analysis against different infections, or extending the study to other Brucella species.