The_gut_microbiota_and_rotavirus_vaccine_efficacy-sc-3125
The_gut_microbiota_and_rotavirus_vaccine_efficacy
This is a pilot study in order to assess the role of the gut microbiota on rotavirus vaccine failure.  Stool samples from cases of rotavirus-potitive diarrhoea, rotavirus negative diarrhoea and healthy controls have been selected from children <1 year from Blantyre, Malawi (post rotavirus vaccine introduction and collected through the ongoing Vacsurv case-control study assessing the effectiveness of the recent introduction of RV vaccine), and  Vellore, India (samples collected during a study on the impact of probiotic and zinc on rotavirus vaccine efficacy, samples included were from the control arm of the study). The vaccine used in the two populations was RV1. These data are part of a pre-publication release. For information on the proper use of pre-publication data shared by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (including details of any publication moratoria), please see http://www.sanger.ac.uk/datasharing/
Rotavirus live oral vaccines have shown poor efficacy in developing world populations. In Malawi RV1 has recently been introduced with the expectation that it will have a major impact on child morbidity and mortality due to diarrhoea, however, vaccine trials showed an efficacy of 49%, in comparison to the >90% efficacy typically seen in high income countries. The natural history of rotavirus infections in an Indian slum birth cohort recently highlighted that rotavirus infections occur earlier in life , reinfections are very frequent in early in life, and that the number of infections required in order to confer subsequent protection from infection and disease is significantly greater than previously described in a cohort of children from Mexico. We want to explore the role of the gut microbiota composition on rotavirus vaccine failure  and our hypotheses are :i)  the gut microbiota at the time of vaccination will impact on vaccine take and immune response. ii) Upon rotavirus infection, development of disease and disease severity is affected by the gut microbiota. This project aims to generate pilot data in order to test these hypotheses in two cohorts, one from Malawi and the second from Vellore. This is justified because despite the rotavirus vaccine efficacy and disease burden being similar in the two populations, it is expected that there will be marked differences in the microbiota composition of the two populations.