The plethora of newly discovered vaccines implies that, in the future, many vaccines will have to be administered simultaneously to infants. We examined the potential interference with the immune response of several coadministered vaccines containing the same protein component, namely, tetanus toxoid (TT). Infants simultaneously receiving a tetravalent pneumococcal vaccine conjugated to TT (Pnc...

Electron micrographs indicate, in harmony with previous findings, that the pneumococcal capsule is a gel of low density outside of and closely applied to the bacterial cell wall. Interaction with homologous immune rabbit serum greatly increases the thickness and density of this capsular gel; the increase in thickness of the specifically swollen pneumococcal capsule may exceed by 25-fold the thi...

OBJECTIVES To prospectively evaluate the immunogenicity of a 13-valent conjugated pneumococcal vaccine (PCV13) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients undergoing etanercept therapy. METHODS Twenty-two RA patients treated with etanercept (ETA) in combination with methotrexate (MTX) (n=15) or monotherapy (n=7) for at least one year were included. Altogether 24 osteoarthritis patients not receivin...

BACKGROUND Because pneumococcal serotype 6C was previously not distinguished from serotype 6A, the impact of the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) on the carriage of serotype 6C is unknown. METHODS The nasopharyngeal (NP) prevalence of the 6C serotype was determined using 1326 pneumococcal isolates collected from 7 cohorts of Massachusetts children between 1994 and 2007. Initiall...

We have recently studied the efficacy of pneumococcal vaccine in preventing pneumonia recurrences after hospital treatment for community-acquired pneumonia in non-immunocompromised patients aged 50-85 y. Among these patients, we have now compared the antibody response to the pneumococcal vaccine between patients who developed pneumonia (n = 50) and patients without pneumonia recurrences (n = 10...

INTRODUCTION Introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) for infants decreased overall invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD), while non-vaccine serotype IPD increased. To fully understand this serotype replacement, knowledge about serotype dynamics in the pre-vaccine era is needed. In addition to IPD surveillance and carriage studies, the serotype replacement can be investigated by ser...

Pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine induces an initial rise in ELISA antibody levels, which then decline over time and in older adults antibody levels measured 4 to 7 years post-vaccination tend to approximate pre-vaccination baseline levels (1-5). The clinical significance of this decline is not well defined, as immune correlates of protection for pneumococcal vaccine in adults have not been e...

S. pneumoniae is a significant cause of community-acquired pneumonia in the elderly, and accounts for the majority of the pneumonia deaths among the elderly. We conducted this randomized double-blind study to evaluate the immune response to a 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine and the persistence of antibodies two years after the vaccination in an elderly population in Santiago, Chil...

The etiological diagnosis of infection by Streptococcus pneumoniae in children is difficult, and the use of indirect techniques is frequently warranted. We aimed to study the use of pneumococcal proteins for the serological diagnosis of pneumococcal infection in children with pneumonia. We analyzed paired serum samples from 13 Brazilian children with invasive pneumococcal pneumonia (positive co...

coincidence of autoimmune diseases such as immune thrombocytopenic purpura (itp) with  immunodeficiencies has  been  reported  previously in  patients  who  suffered  from primary antibody deficiency (pad). but there is no original study on immunological profiles of itp patients to find out their probable immune deficiency. in this case-control study, itp patients’ humoral immunity was investig...