Immunity-enhancing cocktail protects mice against multiple hospital germs

Some people in hospital die not from the illness or accident that got them admitted but from germs they catch once there. In the United States alone, there are hundreds of thousands of hospital-acquired infections each year, leading to tens of thousands of deaths. Seeking to lower this toll, researchers have now come up with an immune-boosting cocktail that increases the survival of mice exposed to the microbes responsible. The three-compound formulation, which the researchers unusually refer to as a vaccine, provided up to 28 days of protection from the notorious hospital bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa , among others, and seems to work by enhancing the innate immune system—the body’s first-line, generalized response to invading pathogens. “It’s a very interesting approach,” says Jay Kolls, a pulmonologist and vaccine researcher at Tulane University. “This is one of the first papers I’ve seen where people are trying to target [these infections] using multiple components that activate the innate immune system.” However, he and other researchers note vaccines typically refer to products that use a microbe or bits of it to trigger specific, long-lasting immunity to one or several related pathogens. This new product, which uses nonspecific ingredients to provide short-term protection against diverse bacteria and fungi, is better called an “immune stimulant” or “enhancer,” they say. The immunity-enhancing formula, des...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news