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Image credit: Gates Archive/Samantha Reinders
Caused by the bacterium Salmonella Typhi, typhoid is a major cause of fever in children in low- and middle-income countries and is responsible for nearly 11 million cases and more than 116,000 deaths a year worldwide.
In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the introduction of TCV for infants and children over six months of age in typhoid-endemic countries, and added it to its list of prequalified vaccines.
Although TCV has been shown to protect against the disease in studies involving healthy volunteers in the UK, no efficacy studies in endemic populations had been completed.
Now, the Typhoid Vaccine Acceleration Consortium (TyVAC), which includes researchers from the University of Oxford, the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and PATH has completed a large field study in Nepal and published the interim analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Read more (University of Oxford)
Funding for the study was provided by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The investigational vaccine Typbar-TCV is licensed by Bharat Biotech International Limited, Hyderabad, India.