"Professor James Paton, a director at GPN Vaccines and Director of the University of Adelaide's Research Centre for Infectious Diseases, says that the current pneumococcal vaccine works by targeting the complex carbohydrates that coat the outside of the Streptococcus pneumoniae bacterium, which is the main cause of pneumonia. He points out that this vaccine, which costs more than US$100 a shot, only covers 13 types of these complex carbohydrates, when there are 98 structurally distinct types. And while there are vaccines being developed that are effective against a greater number of strains, there are still some that slip through the cracks.
The new vaccine developed by GPN Vaccines in partnership with The University of Adelaide works by removing the complex carbohydrates that form an outer coating of the Streptococcus pneumoniae bacterium, exposing the surface proteins that are common to all serotypes of the bacteria. The immune system of individuals that have previously been exposed to those surface proteins or vaccinated can mount a defense against the infection."
With infections being the main killer of CLL patients, and antibiotic resistance increasing all the time, anything that improves the effectiveness of vaccinations is very welcome!
Paula
P.S. I'm trying to see a connection between vaccinations and your interesting photo!
Yes I usually try to match photos with topics, but was struggling with this one. Perhaps I just want better coverage of causes of pneumonia like we have better transport options than this old dray wagon?
The skeletal remains of the wagon tray were photographed in the front yard of a home in a country town in Australia. Seeing the remnants of old farm equipment shows how much farming life has changed, healthwise not always for the better, with farm work becoming far less labour intensive and far more reliant on petrochemicals. We might worry about contamination of our food with herbicides and pesticides, but people living in agricultural communities can't avoid it, particularly if they work directly with the chemicals. In Australia, ground (bore) water is generally too saline for drinking, so rainwater is the common source of drinking water. Spray drift makes it inevitable that people in farming communities are going to ingest what is sprayed on crops...
I lived on a hard-scrabble farm before the spraying--we used fertilizer and lime in reading the soil for crops, though (dust from those was of course a bad thing.) We had a horse and plow. Sowing was by hand and spreading fertilizer was by hand also.
That and having the possibility of some blood from the Ashkenazi (though I am not of the Jewish faith) of Russia and having the experience of using a benzene product to refinish furniture in the 1980s makes for a possible reason for my CLL.
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