Leptospirosis vaccines

Abstract

Leptospirosis is a serious infection disease caused by pathogenic strains of the Leptospira spirochetes, which affects not only humans but also animals. It has long been expected to find an effective vaccine to prevent leptospirosis through immunization of high risk humans or animals. Although some leptospirosis vaccines have been obtained, the vaccination is relatively unsuccessful in clinical application despite decades of research and millions of dollars spent. In this review, the recent advancements of recombinant outer membrane protein (OMP) vaccines, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) vaccines, inactivated vaccines, attenuated vaccines and DNA vaccines against leptospirosis are reviewed. A comparison of these vaccines may lead to development of new potential methods to combat leptospirosis and facilitate the leptospirosis vaccine research. Moreover, a vaccine ontology database was built for the scientists working on the leptospirosis vaccines as a starting tool.

Virtual screening for potential inhibitors of homology modeled Leptospira interrogans MurD ligase

“…Due to wide range of wild reservoirs for the pathogen Leptospira, prevention of infection by controlling environmental factors is difficult to practice in developing countries. Either an effective and safe leptospirosis vaccine or a potent drug for treatment of severe form of leptospirosis is yet to be invented [6,7]. Thus, structure-based virtual screening procedure would be highly useful for discovery of potential inhibitors targeting novel common drug targets identified from pathogenic L. interrogans serovars through subtractive genomic approach [data not shown].…”

Laboratory investigation of adult small ruminant Leptospirosis, a neglected infection in Greece: problems and recommendations

“…Such knowledge is required for evaluating the need of a vaccination program for small ruminants in high risk areas. Because vaccines confer best protection only to homologous serovars (ILS-WHO, 2003;Wang et al, 2007;Cerqueria and Picardeau, 2009;Hartskeerl et al, 2011), knowledge of the predominant serovars will determine the success of commercially available vaccines. Nevertheless, a positive MAT does not indicate active infection, thus it requires confirmation with other available methods or means for establishing active infection.…”

Principais aspectos da infecção por Leptospira sp em ovinos

“…Destaca-se que o sucesso dos programas de vacinação depende de estudos epidemiológicos contínuos para monitorar a ocorrência de diferentes sorovariedades de leptospiras em uma população (WANG et al, 2007) No Brasil, existem vacinas disponíveis no mercado, porém são poucos os estudos com vacina anti-Leptospira sp em ovinos, sendo a maioria em bovinos, suínos e caninos. O controle da doença em ovinos com o uso de bacterinas comerciais é comum no país, porém geralmente são utilizadas bacterinas disponíveis no mercado para a utilização em bovinos, sem haver, contudo, uma avaliação da eficiência destas para ovinos (HERRMANN, 2002).…”